

CONTENT^ 


* 

V9 


A 


i. 


p Bimetallism — Silver and Gold, 

> 

II. 


r I 


he Crime of the Nineteenth Century, 


III. 


The Greatness of the Crime, 


IV. 


T 


he Bland-Allison and Sherman Laws, 


V. 


PAGE 

3 


l 7 


3 1 


43 


The Right Kind of Money 


57 





BIMETALLISM. 



N A VERY important sense of the word, no 
man has ever seen the money of a nation. 
Although every one has seen coins and paper 
representatives of gold and of silver pieces of 
money, no man has ever seen the collective 
amount of the circulating medium of ex- 
change of any country — which is called at 
times “ the money of a country.” The expression, “ the 
money of the United States,” as here for a moment used, 
means the entire amount of gold and silver coins which, 
with the paper money ultimately redeemable in coin, com- 
prises the circulating medium of the republic. Too few 
people in the United States realize the interesting fact that 
all articles of merchandise and all kinds of property are 
necessarily valued at some fractional part of the money of 
their country. 

Suppose that there was a community of r 00,000 people 
which had a circulating medium of $2,000,000, one-half of 
which amount was in gold and the other half in silver. 
The prices of all stocks and bonds, and of all houses and 
farms, and of all articles of commerce, would be worth 
fractional parts of that $2,000,000. For example: If a 
house was valued at $2,000 it would be really worth a one- 
thousandth part of the amount of the circulating medium 
of the community. If the amount of money in the commu- 
nity was suddenly doubled, and the house thus became worth 
the one-thousandth part of $4,000,000 instead of being worth 
a fractional part of $2,000,000, the house would command 
a price of $4,000 instead of $2,000 as heretofore. But,, 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


4 

suppose — as the great and cunning financiers in New York 
and London know well that the circulating medium 
in a community such as is here being described was sud- 
denly reduced from $2,000,000 to but $1,000,000; then a 
house that had been worth $2,000 when the amount of the 
money of the community was $2,000,000 would suddenly 
be valued at only $1,000, as it would be worth but a one- 
thousandth part of a circulating medium that had suddenly 
been changed from $2,000,000 to but $1,000,000. A man 
who had borrowed $1,000 on his house or farm when it 
was valued at $2,000 might thus lose his house or farm, as 
he could only sell it for $1,000. 

One might here ask how- could the circulating medium 
of that community be suddenly reduced one-half? The 
answer is: By simply demonetizing one of the precious 
metals; it would not matter whether it was gold or silver 
that was demonetized — the effect would be the same. 
The moment that gold or silver was demonetized that 
moment the circulating medium of exchange of the com- 
munity would be reduced from $2,000,000 to but $1,000,- 
000, and the natural result which one might well expect to 
flow from such legislation would be a panic such as swept 
over the United States in the year 1873. 

In a community such as has been pictured a certain class 
of people would be well pleased with the demonetization of 
one of the precious metals, inasmuch as holders of bonds 
and mortgages, and men to whom, in various ways, money 
was owing, would have their fortunes increased at the ex- 
pense of the debtor classes of society, and at the cost of 
owners of real estate and of various kinds of property. 
The interest paid to creditors would be doubled in pur- 
chasing power. With one dollar they could hire a man to 
work for them, where before the striking down of one of 
the precious metals two dollars a day would have had to 
have been paid, to him. Times would be made so hard 
that many industries would languish and many men would 
be unable to get any remunerative work. 

It is well to bear in mind that while people buy mer- 
chandise with money, they also buy or exchange money 
for merchandise. To use a homely illustration, if potatoes 
are very scarce they would be dear — indeed, even a dollar 
of to-day might not buy a bushel of them. But if potatoes 


BIMETALLISM. 


5 

were as plentiful as they are to-day and money was very 
scarce the money would be dear and a great many pota- 
toes would have to be given by a farmer to get even one 
dollar of money. If silver is demonetized in the United 
States money becomes twice as dear as it would be if silver 
and gold were money. 

Silver has been used as money from prehistoric times by 
unnumbered millions of people. The Bible in its first book, 
and again and again during the ages to whose history it 
incidentally alludes, speaks of silver as being used as 
money. Of Abraham, who lived some four thousand 
years ago, we are told in the thirteeenth chapter of Gene- 
sis that he “was very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold.” 
A passage from this ancient book — a passage which, if a 
little long, is at once instructive and pathetic — may here 
be presented. Of Abraham, the father of the Jewish race, 
it is told how, when his beloved wife, Sarah, died, he 
bought a piece of ground in which to bury her. The pas- 
sage reads thus: “And Abraham stood up before his 
dead and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying: I am a 
stranger and a sojourner among you ; give me a possession 
of a burying place with you, that I ma}^ bury my dead out 
of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abra- 
ham, saying unto him: Hear us, my lord, thou art a 
mighty prince among us; in the choice of our sepulchres 
bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his 
sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And 
Abraham stood up and bowed himself to the people of the 
land, even to the children of Heth. And he communed 
with them, saying, if it be your mind that I should bury 
my dead out of my sight, hear me, and entreat for me to 
Ephron, the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave 
of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his 
field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me 
for. a possession of a burying place amongst you. And 
Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth; and Ephron, 
the Hittite, answered Abraham in the audience of the 
children of Heth, even to all that went in at the end of the 
gate of his city, saying: Nay, my lord, hear me, the field 
give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in 
the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee; bury 
thy dead. And Abraham bowed down himself before the 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


6 

people of the land. And he spake unto Ephron in the 
audience of the people of the land, saying: But if thou 
wilt give it, I pray thee hear me: I will give thee money 
for the field, take it of me, and I will bury my dead there. 
And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him: My 
lord, hearken unto me, the land is worth four hundred 
shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury, 
therefore, thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto 
Ephron, and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver 
which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, 
four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the 
merchant,” etc. 

Without pausing to quote other extracts from the Bible 
showing how silver was regarded as money by different 
nations, suffice it to say that our Lord himself used silver 
money. If one turns from the Bible to ancient secular 
history, it appears that in the Roman empire, whose flag 
at the time of Christ waved over 140,000,000 people, the 
coinage system was bimetallic. The legal ratio between sil- 
ver and gold was 9 to 1. Of gold and silver at that period in 
the Roman empire it is estimated that there was an amount 
equivalent in United States money to $1,790,000,000. The 
white metal — sometimes in the form of strange looking 
coins or weights has been used as money for thousands 
of years in India and in China and in Japan. At the pres- 
ent day silver is used as money by about ten or twelve 
hundred millions of people. The number of human beings 
— if the Turks are included — who in the year 1873 used 
gold alone as their legal tender money for sums above 
small amounts was about 75,000,000. 

In recent years a certain class of students have gathered 
together large and very instructive collections of ancient 
and of mediaeval and of modern coins. These pieces of 
money, representing the different styles of the medium of 
exchange used by different nations during very many cent- 
uries, probably number several hundred thousand. Some 
of them are stamped with the portraits of the great con- 
querors and monarchs of their day. Others bear likenesses 
to supposed deities, while others have pictures of one kind 
or another stamped upon them. These coins bear inscrip- 
tions or governmental stamps, which gave to them the 
definite value which they possessed in the times in which 


BIMETALLISM. 


7 

they were minted. There is a lesson to be learned from 
these coins of great importance to the people of the United 
States. Greece, beginning at a period of at least 700 years 
before the Christian era, for about a thousand }^ears had a 
beautiful coinage system. The money of the Grecians 
consisted of artistically minted coins of gold and silver, 
and of electrum. The electrum coins were made of an 
alloy of gold and silver. One ounce of gold was by law 
valued at 13^ ounces of silver. The gold coins and the 
silver pieces of money bore to electrum coins a valuation 
based upon the legal ratio of value established between 
gold and silver. 

Without pausing to dwell upon the silver and gold coins, 
dating from the year 516 before the Christian era, minted 
by Persia during the period when she was one of the great- 
est powers of the world, and without stopping to speak of 
the coinage systems of each of the nations of antiquity, 
let it here be noticed that in no part of the world before 
the Christian era did any people use gold alone as their 
money metal. Some nations used only silver money, some 
used silver and gold and electrum coins, but no govern- 
ment was so rash as to attempt to provide only gold coins 
with which to supply a medium of exchange for a people. 

From the days of Christ to the year 1816 the people of 
all civilized nations used gold and silver, or silver alone — 
except copper or bronze money with which to make small 
change — in their business transactions. It would seem 
that for almost 1,700 years succeeding the time of Christ 
no nations can be said to have had their coinage system 
based on gold. One Roman emperor did, indeed, decree 
that all taxes should be paid in gold, but the experiment 
was found so injurious to the welfare of the people that no 
other Roman emperor ever again tried the experiment. 
The only other attempt that any government seems to 
have made to have a gold system of coinage — if an at- 
tempt it should be called — was by the Merovingian dynasty 
in the early history of France. Under that dynasty it 
would seem that the coins that were minted were almost 
wholly — but never entirely — of gold. The experiment 
was so unsatisfactory that when the next dynasty — the 
Carlovingian — came into power almost all the coins minted 
were of silver. But a very curious custom prevailed of 


8 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


coining at intervals some gold money. This, it has been 
suggested, was to show to the world that the government 
claimed the right to coin into money both of the precious 
metals. 

In every age and in every civilized land gold and silver 
were regarded as precious metals. The statesmen of all 
nations during a period of some 4,000 years, in proportion 
as they were learned, must have realized that the amount 
of the yellow metal obtainable from the ground by human 
industry was far too limited to justify its use as the sole 
monetary metal of the world. 

The statesmen who founded the government of the 
United States incorporated a provision in the national con- 
stitution forbidding any State to make anything but gold 
and silver legal tender money. Hamilton, as Secretary of 
the United States Treasury, showed by very able reason- 
ing that it was best for the people of the United States to 
adopt a bimetallic system of coinage. Washington, with 
the true and enlightened patriotism which characterized his 
course toward his country, signed, as President of the 
United States, a bill opening the mints of the United States 
to both of the precious metals. The excellent coinage 
system thus established, and continued in force until the 
year 1873, is known as bimetallic. This coinage system 
was in the truest sense of the word worthy of the best days 
of American statesmanship. 

The bimetallic system of coinage called into being vari- 
ous subtle laws which worked very beneficently for the 
people of the United States, and even very happily affected 
for good the well being of the nations of the world having 
commercial relations with the United States. Gold kept, 
to a great degree, silver from becoming too scarce or dear 
for the mercantile needs of the world, and silver performed 
a like service for gold. If for any reason one of the pre- 
cious metals became, for monetary purposes, scarce, the 
other one would take its place. In the eyes of the law a 
certain amount of silver had the same monetary value as a 
certain amount of gold. The value of every house, of 
every farm, of every mortgage, as well as the bonds rep- 
resenting the national debt — in short, all kinds of property 
— was valued in a money, the unit of which was a dollar; 
the gold dollar and the silver dollar being in the eyes of 


BIMETALLISM. 


9 

the law of equal value. It made no more difference in the 
prosperity of the country if it happened at any time, as in- 
deed it did happen in the history of the United States, that 
all the gold in the United States, except an amount less, 
perhaps, than $500,000, was shipped to Europe, than it 
did if it happened at another period that almost all the 
silver legal tender money of our country was eagerly se- 
cured by bankers to send to Europe. Although the mints 
of the United States were alike open to the coinage of gold 
and silver the government was glad, indeed, for some forty 
years before the year 1873 to P a y more than $1.29 an 
ounce for silver bullion — or to take it, as did the mints of 
many lands, at a valuation of 15 % of silver for 1 of gold. 
The amount of legal tender metallic money in circulation 
— which was vastly more important than whether most of 
it was yellow or most of it was white — was always the 
same as though exactly one-half of the medium of exchange 
was of gold and the other half of silver. Thus the value 
of property was much more stable than if it was kept con- 
tinually rising and falling with the fluctuations in the sup- 
ply of a single metal. The people of the United States 
were neither on a gold basis or on a silver basis in any 
sense of the word injurious to their best interests. They 
all the time had a bimetallic system of coinage. The 
amount of money in the country, whether most of it hap- 
pened at one time to be white and at another time to be 
yellow, of which every kind of property was worth a frac- 
tional part, remained the same. The government sacredly 
guarded the rights of all classes of citizens to pay their 
debts in either of the precious metals. The prices of lands 
and houses and merchandise were thus comparatively 
stable. 

The bimetallic system of coinage has worked so happily 
in all lands in which it has been tried during thousands of 
years — and so powerful has its tendency been to maintain 
an equilibrium between the value of gold and silver at a 
given ratio — that it has been compared to two great res- 
ervoirs of water united with each other by a large pipe. 
If the water of one reservoir was drawn upon the water of 
the other reservoir would by natural laws restore the equi- 
librium between the levels of the waters. Under the bi- 
metallic system of coinage, which rendered to gold and 


IO 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


silver a similiar service to that rendered by the pipe to the 
two reservoirs, the value of the two metals always main- 
tained their relative levels of value as surely as would the 
waters of the two reservoirs rise and sink with each ocher. 
As the waters in neither of the reservoirs could rise or 
sink as fast as they would were the reservoirs not united 
to each other by a pipe, no more could gold or silver, no 
matter how much gold one year or how much silver in an- 
other year should be obtained from the ground, rise or sink 
in value as quickly as would be the case were not the two 
precious metals united with each other by the bimetallic 
coinage system. Thus under such a system money was a 
far truer — a much more honest — measure or values than 
could be only a gold or only a silver standard of values. 
It almost always happened that if at one period an unusual 
amount of gold was obtained from the ground that at that 
period the amount of silver would be no greater, if not, in- 
deed, less than usual, while at another period the output of 
silver would be increased, while the amount of gold ob- 
tained would be diminished. Under almost every imagin- 
able circumstance the relative value of silver to gold was 
maintained by natural laws. The danger of there occur- 
ring a famine of coin metal was greatly lessened. How 
powerfully the relative value of gold and silver was fixed 
by a bimetallic coinage system can be seen by figures pub- 
lished by the United States Treasury Department in the 
Statistical Abstract from the year 1687 to 1873. Indeed, 
according to a statement made at the International Mone- 
tary Conference in 1892! he relative value between gold 
and silver in 200 years never once exceeded 15.92 to 1, or 
was less than 14.14 of silver to 1 of gold — that is there 
was never a deviation greater than 1.8 — while the ex- 
change between one gold-using country and another was 
often greater than that — indeed even the exchange be- 
tween different parts of the same country was greater than 
was the deviation in centuries between gold and silver un- 
der a bimetallic coinage sytem. 

As Senator John Sherman, in his erratic course in respeet 
to financial legislation, has even gone so far as to state that 
if the people of the United States should reopen their mints 
to the free coinage of silver they would be on a silver basis, 
as are the people of Mexico and of India, it is well to here 


BIMETALLISM. 


I I 

point out that, aside jfrom the question whether thousands 
of years of history has not demonstrated that nations on a 
silver basis have a better coinage system than nations on a 
gold basis, no matter how much gold at one period was 
exported by the people of the United States, and that no 
matter how much silver was exported at another period, 
so well did the American statesmen of the last century 
devise a bimetallic coinage system for the United States 
that they were never on either a gold basis or on a silver 
basis in any sense injurious to their best interests until the 
years 1873 and 1874; and that in the sense of being on a 
silver or on a gold basis, as they would be if they had but 
one legal tender coin metal, they could not be on such a 
basis under the wise mintage laws which were in force 
from the foundation of our republic until the year 1873. 
Under the coinage laws which were then in force, if silver 
happened to be more commonly in use than was gold, the 
yellow metal ever kept guard of the white metal, ready to 
come on the scene the moment that silver was made a little 
dearer than its rightful relative value to the money metal 
with which it was inseparably linked. Silver performed 
the same service for gold. The moment that one of the 
precious metals became a little cheaper, so to speak, than 
the other, that moment such a demand arose on the part of 
those who had payments of money to make, or money to 
loan to others, for the cheaper money, that, inasmuch as 
the price of everything rises whose quantity is limited and 
for which the demand is increased, its value by a natural 
law was restored. It was restored all the more rapidly 
inasmuch as just in proportion as the demand for the 
cheaper metal was increased the demand for the dearer 
metal was lessened. Thus the equilibrium between the 
value of a gold dollar and the value of a silver dollar was 
maintained. 

Senator Jones, in a speech worthy of the highest praise 
— one which every American statesman should read — 
delivered at the International Monetary Conference which 
met in Brussels in the year 1892, alluding to the loose way 
in which some people speak of a gold standard and of a 
silver standard, said: u As well might it be maintained 
because a yardstick of Great Britain is composed of bronze 
that, therefore, Great Britain is on the ‘ bronze standard ’ 


12 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


of measure; or, if that yardstick we^e composed of ivory, 
that Great Britain would be on the 4 ivory standard ’; or, 
assuming the bushel measure to consist of an iron pot of 
that capacity, that, therefore, all things sold by the bushel 
in that country would be measured by the 4 iron standard.’ 
So far as money is concerned,” Senator Jones continued, 
44 a ‘standard’ is and must be a measure of quantity; be- 
cause, other things being equal, it is the quantity of money 
that determines the value of the money unit. * * * 

Notwithstanding that the double standard was composed 
of two metals, we insist that it was one standard in the 
same sense in which the gold advocates use the term 
4 standard,’ and that, as in the case of two metals used in 
the compensating pendulum, they made a very much better 
standard than either one of them alone would have made.” 

Senator Jones in a most masterly manner, in his truly 
great address at the conference, illustrates great monetary 
truths which may well deeply interest the statesmen of all 
lands The coinage system-which he advocated in a man- 
ner so able as to deserve the thanks of all nations was the 
coinage system which the great statesmen who gave us 
the constitution of the United States selected for their 
country. It is a system which the history of thousands of 
years shows to have worked well for mankind in all na- 
tions in which it has been tried. Inasmuch as no nation in 
the world can be said to have ever successfully tried to 
have a coinage system founded on gold until in the twen- 
tieth century England, occupying a peculiar position among 
the nations of the world, has undertaken to try the exper- 
iment, Germany with the gold wrung from France foolishly 
undertaking to follow her example, it may be well for the 
people of the United States to remember that the same 
England which demonetized silver in the British Isles de- 
monetized gold in the Indian empire. As a matter of fact, 
vastly more people in the empire over which floats the 
British flag use silver than use gold. Vastly more silver 
is minted in what may be called British mints even now 
than is coined of silver and gold in the United States 
mints. As to Germany, the people may at any time return 
to a bimetallic coinage system. During the last half cent- 
ury they have at one time had a bimetallic system of 
coinage. They have at one time demonetized gold; at 


BIMETALLISM. 


*3 

another time they have demonetized silver, and now they 
are learning by experience that gold alone is the poorest 
of money metals. Neither England nor Germany is to- 
day, perhaps, so much as one-third as prosperous as were 
the people of the United States when they had the safe 
and tried bimetallic system of coinage of which they were 
robbed in the year 1873. 

The beneficiaries of what is widely known as the great- 
est crime of this century — by which is meant the surrep- 
titious demonetization of silver — are to-day having many 
newspapers edited in a style which reveals that among the 
wealthy there are men who are willing to rob the poor in 
ways which even Anarchists would scorn to take the prop- 
erty of the rich — indeed men who, through so-called news 
associations, and in various other ways, endeavor to intim- 
idate and mislead, and to influence in every artful way in 
their power the chief executive of the nation and members 
of Congress into casting aside the safe and tried bimetallic 
coinage system devised by the patriots who established our 
republic, and which was enjoyed by the people of the 
United States until the historic year 1873. 

One may well wonder whether the beneficiaries of the 
crime of the century realize how exceedingly scant for the 
monetary supply of the world is the amount of gold that is 
at present obtainable. According to the testimony of the 
Director of the United States mint the entire gold product 
of the United States in the year 1892 was but approxi- 
mately $33,000,000. According to the same authority the 
people of the United States in that year used $19,329,000 
of gold in the industrial arts. He does not state how 
much gold was lost by wear and tear and in other ways, 
but he does inform us that $58,570,536 in gold over and 
above any gold imported was exported in the year 1892. 
In all the world in the year 1892 there was got out of the 
earth but $130,417,050. Because of the eagerness with 
which gold is sought, perhaps, the amount produced from 
the ground may be increased, but the average amount of 
it obtained from the ground in the years 1890-91-92 was 
but about $126,000,000. It is probable that not less than 
$100,000,000 is used yearly in the world in the industrial 
arts. Dr. Soetbeer, one of the most eminent writers on 
gold, shortly before his death, wrote that when the amount 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


X 4 

of gold used in the industrial arts and the amount needed 
by Oriental countries and for private hoards is considered 
that no one can prove that any gold whatever is left from 
the yearly output of mines for monetary purposes. This 
simple statement by the late Dr. Soetbeer means vastly 
more than ordinary people can realize inasmuch as prac- 
tically a famine of the only money metal of some nations 
is upon us. Moreover, it is well that the people of the 
United States should realize that they exported in the year 
ending June 30th, 1893, $87,506,463 more dollars in gold 
than they imported. The vast amount of credit that banks 
were wont to give, based upon the limited amount of gold 
in the United States must be lessened in proportion as the 
amount of gold on which it is based becomes less and less. 
In the meantime the population of the United States is in- 
creasing and yearly needing a larger amount of money 
than it needed the past year. Who will adequately picture 
the misery and poverty and panic that must blight our 
country if the beneficiaries of the crime of 1873 are allowed 
to continue to have their way. A time has been in Wall 
Street, New York — it will ever be known in the history 
of our country as Black Friday — when a single bold and 
shrewd speculator, Jay Gould (it is stated on the authority 
of Charles Francis Adams in his book entitled u Chapters 
on Erie”) bought $60,000,000 of gold; his partner, James 
Fisk, bought an unknown amount; other speculators 
bought largely, and a gold dollar became worth, as meas- 
ured by greenbacks, some where between two and three 
hundred cents. A most wild panic seized Wall Street and 
the people of the United States were at the mercy of the 
financiers of Wall Street, when General Grant, who was 
President of the United States, opened the doors of the 
United States Treasury so far as to let out specie enough 
to drive down the value of gold. For a time, however, 
panic and awful commercial disaster hovered over our re- 
public. If a few men of wealth could thus control the 
specie of our country — and at a time when silver was 
money as truly as was gold — what could the men of Wall 
Street do to enrich themselves by making money scarce 
and dear if the gold clique of the present day succeeds in 
preventing the remonetization of silver, or if it succeeds in 
repealing, without giving a substitute, the sadly faulty bill 
known as the Sherman Bill? 


BIMETALLISM. 


!5 

At the present time banks are failing on every hand. 
Business houses are falling all over our country. As a rule, 
the business men of the United States are in an agony of 
distress. The President of the United States has been 
compelled to call an extra session in August — the hottest 
time of the year at the national capital — to stay, if pos- 
sible, the panic which hovers as an awful danger over our 
fair republic. Upon the action taken by the government 
will depend the value of all kinds of property, not only in 
the United States, but in all parts of the American conti- 
nent. On the one hand, there is a clique of men in our 
land which has succeeded in controlling to a large extent 
the press of the principal eastern cities. On the other hand, 
there are members of Congress who know that the voice 
of thousands of years of history testify to the practicability 
and to the wisdom of nations using gold and silver alike 
as money. The truth is, that the example of Washington 
and of the patriots of his day when they devised a coinage 
system for the United States, and the eighty and more 
years of experience of our country when it had a bimetallic 
coinage system, as well as the pleading of enlightened 
statesmanship, which justly defies the beneficiaries of the 
crime of crimes of the century to show by argument that 
the national debt of the United States was not contracted 
to be paid in coin when that word meant silver as well as 
gold — all most earnestly unite in recommending to the 
statesmen of the present day the tried and safe bimetallic 
coinage system which in every nation in which it has been 
tried during thousands of years of history has worked 
beneficently for mankind. 














II. 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



N THE YEAR 1867 Senator John Sherman 
visited Europe. There, it may be, it was that 
his mind became impregnated with the heresy 
in monetary science that the United States 
ought to destroy the legal tender character of 
the white metal for all sums greater than ten 

dollars. Whether it was a certain class of men 

who do business in Wall Street, New York, and in Lom- 
bard Street, London, who made a convert of this talented 
but sadly misguided man, or whether, as would seem to be 
the fact, he had never given the history of money the 
study which it would have been well if he had given it, 
and was captivated by some theory that he met with some- 
where or another, which seemed to him plausible, or 
whether he was flattered by lobbyists into espousing the 
mischievous theory that the world did not need as a mone- 
tary metal silver, certain it is that he espoused the 
scheme of demonetizing one of the money metals of the 
world with a zeal worthy of a nobler cause. 

It is but charitable to suppose, and indeed it is probably 
the truth, that Senator Sherman was not sufficiently well 
read in respect to the history of gold and silver money and 
the relation to each other of the precious metals and their 
relation to civilization to realize how pregnant for evil to 
unnumbered millions of human beings was his erratic 
course. On January 6, 1868, he offered in the United 
States Senate a resolution taking away from silver dollars 
all legal tender rights for sums greater than ten dollars. 
The State of New York was at the time represented by 


j3 silver and gold money. 

the noble hearted and learned Senator E. D. Morgan 
with great ability. He wrote a report against such an un- 
wise and exceedingly unjust measure. His report was so 
conclusive in its reasoning that Sherman was at that time 
defeated in his effort to demonetize silver in the United 
States. Sherman’s next attempt to get the United States 
government to try a gold basis of money was made in a 
far more artful way than had been his first attempt. In 
the early part of 1869 he introduced a bill into the Senate 
which appeared to be simply designed to regulate various 
details in the management of the mints of the United 
States. Among the various provisions of the bill there was 
an omission of any allusion to the coining of silver dollars. 
Although no one seems to have noticed that owing to such 
an omission no silver dollars could be coined if the bill 
passed, and that thenceforth there would be no legal tender 
metallic money except gold, the bill did not pass. Sherman 
for some reason, for the time being, dropped it. In the 
meanwhile, however, as the vultures scent their prey, it 
seems that some keen-sighted European financiers were 
planning to make money scarce and dear in the United 
States by demonetizing one of the precious metals, and to 
thus vastly enchance the value of the hundreds upon hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars’ worth of United States bonds 
and other securities held in Europe. 

It would seem that a syndicate was formed in Europe 
which raised a fund of about £100,000 to bring about the 
desired legislation in Washington. It would seem that this 
syndicate paid a Mr. Ernest Seyd, who was a singularly 
shrewd man, to visit the United States. That Mr. Seyd 
was successful in helping to shape legislation in such a way 
as to demonetize silver in the United States seems to be 
certain. 

The next step in the interests of the creditor class of 
Europe and of the United States was taken in the House 
of Representatives A lengthy bill was introduced in 
that body having some sixty-seven sections, which were 
prepared in such a way that any one when reading them 
might have supposed they merely regulated some petty 
details in regard to the management of the mint. The bill 
was prepared in part by John J. Knox, who at the time 
held the position of director of the United States mint. A 


THE CRIME OE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


*9 

Mr. Hooper of Massachusetts had, in the absence of Judge 
Kelley, who was chairman of the committee which attended 
to such a coinage bill, the measure in charge. Alluding to 
Mr. Seyd, who, it is alleged, was in the employ of European 
bondholders, he made, when introducing the bill, the fol- 
lowing remarks : u Ernest Seyd of London, a distinguished 
writer and bullionist who has given great attention to the 
subject of mints and coinage, is now here, and after exam- 
ining the first drafts of this bill made various sensible sug- 
gestions which the committee accepted and embodied in 
the bill.” 

When Mr. Hooper concluded his speech a Mr. Potter 
from New York, who was uncommonly learned in the sci- 
ence of finance and was manifestly a very honorable man, 
arose and pointed out that no provision was made in the 
bill for the coinage of standard dollars. He stated that, 
as far as he was concerned, he would be willing to have a 
coinage system founded on gold, but that it would be un- 
just to vast numbers of people to thus change the monetary 
system of the United States. This speech seemed to kill 
the bill. Here the mystery respecting the history of this 
bill deepens. Some will have it that Mr. Hooper was a 
deep plotting conspirator, and that, as a robber when en- 
gaged in his criminal business hears a slight sound, which 
might awake the sleepers whom he wishes to rob, fears 
that he is discovered and for a time remains silent in the 
midnight darkness, so did Mr. Hooper pause in his stealthy 
work; and although he had the right of way in the House 
for his bill he did not move again until an opportune mo- 
ment came to get it through the House in a fraudulent 
manner. Others are of the opinion that, however he acted 
at a later moment, he did not at that time mean to act 
fraudulently. Two days before the closing of the session 
the bill was again presented to the House. At this time 
there was necessarily much bustle and confusion in the 
House. Every member was eager to catch the Speaker’s 
eye in order to get some particular bill passed. A worthy 
debate on a long coinage bill was impossible. Mr. Potter 
was not at his post. A colleague of his, however, asked 
Mr. Hooper a question in regard to the section to which 
Mr. Potter had objected. It is claimed that Mr. Hooper 
distinctly stated to the House that the bill had been so 


20 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


changed that it was no longer open to the objection that 
had been made to it by Mr. Potter; in short, that it was 
a bill simply regulating the mints and not affecting the 
legal tender value of the money of the country. This 
statement by Mr. Hooper was accepted in good faith, and 
there is reason to think that at the time he spoke it was, 
in the main, the truth. It is claimed that no section of the 
bill was read to the House that would raise a doubt as to 
the truthfulness of the statement. Thus the bill was 
quickly passed, and was engrossed and sent to the Senate 
on the last day of the session — too late, it would seem, to 
be printed and placed on the desks of Senators for exam- 
ination. In the natural course of business it did not come 
before the Senate until the early part of January, 1873. It 
was then referred to a committee of which John Sherman 
was the chairman. He introduced it, with amendments, to 
the Senate on January 16, 1873. He seemed to think that 
it could at once be passed. He said, as he introduced it, 
that it would not “ take more than the time consumed in 
the reading of it.” At this point the mystery of this evil 
bill still further deepens. Paragraph after paragraph was 
read, and a debate to some extent occurred on every one 
of its sixty-seven sections except, as shown by the record, 
one which was not read. Every one of the sections was 
debated to some extent except the one that was not read 
by the clerk. This was the section which was ultimately 
mysteriously incorporated into the bill closing the mints of 
the United States to the coinage of silver dollars. The 
silver dollar, owing to very interesting reasons it is proposed 
in due time to state, was the only silver coin that was at 
the time legal tender money for amounts above five dol- 
lars. How the section of the bill which was not read and 
was not debated, and was not known to be in it by, it 
would seem, hardly any one, was found to be in it when 
signed by the President is a question to be solved. Sen- 
ator William M. Stewart, in a very able speech delivered 
on June 1, 1892, alluding to this part of the bill not having 
been read — a fact which he had verified by an exhaustive 
examination of all the records of the debate — well said: 
u This is a strange omission. It is probable that it has not 
a parallel in the history of legislation. Every other pas- 
sage of the bill was read and discussed.” 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 2I 

Senator Stewart has again and again gone minutely into 
the history of this vastly important bill. One of Stewart’s 
very able speeches delivered in the Senate on June i, 1892, 
and a truly great speech delivered by Senator James B. 
Beck — a speech which, after Senator Beck’s death, Sen- 
ator Morgan had, on January 10, 1891, spread a second 
time upon the pages of the Congressional Record — should 
be read by every student of the history of the conspiracy 
to destroy one-half of the specie of the United States in the 
interests of the great holders of American bonds and se- 
curities in Europe and in the United States. In this paper 
it is proposed to present various facts, some of which are 
collected from these speeches. 

It would seem that in truth Mr. Hooper had substituted 
for the clause in the bill to which Mr. Potter had objected 
a clause by which the American dollar was to contain a 
little less silver than it had always had — that is, it was to 
have an amount of silver which would make it exactly 
equivalent in value to the five franc piece of France, whose 
ratio had been by laws enacted in the years 1785 and 1803 
fixed at 1 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold. Even 
at the present day the ratio of silver to gold is 15J4 to 1 
in France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, 
Russia and the Netherlands, and in the Central American 
States, as well as in all the South American States and 
Hayti. As long as the United States continued to coin at 
the rate of 16 to 1 they were in danger of losing all of their 
silver by its being exported to countries where silver is 
valued at a ratio to gold at i$}£ to 1. Sherman, when 
presenting the bill to the Senate, addressing himself in part 
to a Senator, said : “ If the Senator will allow me he will see 
that the preceding section provides for coin which is exactly 
interchangeable with the English shilling and the five franc 
piece of France; that is, a five franc piece of France will 
be the exact equivalent of a dollar of the United States in 
silver coinage.” As he continued he added: “And in 
order to show this wherever our silver coin shall float — 
and we are providing that it shall float all over the world — 
we propose to stamp upon it instead of our eagle * * * 
the intrinsic fineness of the coin.” 

In view of this speech Senator Stewart once said to Sen- 
ator Sherman with deep feeling: “Whatever may be 


22 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


your construction now the words used then induced me to 
vote with you because you made me believe that you were 
sending out a bona fide silver dollar as good as any in the 
world.” 

In respect to this controversy between Senators Stewart 
and Sherman the truth appears to be that any section in 
the bill which Mr. Hooper got through the House of Rep- 
resentatives, which provided for the coinage of a standard 
silver dollar by the mints, was stricken out of the bill in 
some very mysterious and criminal manner, and that with- 
out the Senate’s knowledge a substitute was inserted in its 
place, which substitute made it unlawful to mint any coins 
not mentioned in the bill — thus making it unlawful to coin 
the standard silver dollar, seeing that no mention was left 
of it in the bill. Whether this change was made by some 
mistake, or whether it was feloniously made when it was 
before the Senate with Sherman’s knowledge, or whether 
some clerk was bribed to make it when engrossing the bill 
does not seem to be perfectly clear. Certain it is that the 
record shows that the substitute was never read by the 
Clerk of the Senate or by anybody to the Senate, nor was 
it read by anybody to the House of Representatives, nor 
was there any debate on such a section. 

No newspapers hinted to the country that one of the 
money metals of the United States upon which the values 
of all kinds of property were as truly based as upon the 
other was about being demonetized. 

The Senate having made certain amendments to the bill 
that had been read to them, thus changing somewhat the 
one which the House of Representatives had passed, ac- 
cording to custom each house appointed a committee of 
conference to meet each other and adjust the differences 
between the two houses respecting the provisions of the 
bill. Senator Sherman and Mr. Hooper became members 
of this small committee; in fact, one of them acted as the 
chairman of the Senate committee, and the other as the 
chairman of the House committee. Here the mystery re- 
specting the so-called substitute in the bill grows still 
darker. Did the bill have in it at all a clause closing the 
mints of the United States to silver before it entered into 
this small conclave of men? It certainly appears to have 
had such a clause when it issued from this coterie of men, 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


23 

two of whom had vainly, on former occasions, endeavored 
to assassinate the beneficent bimetallic coinage system 
given to the people of the United States by Washington 
and by the men to whose wisdom under Heaven they owe 
the blessing of a republican form of government — a form 
of government one of whose chief features was to be the 
protection of all classes of society from the selfish wiles of 
any aristocracy inclined to enrich itself unjustly at the 
people’s expense. 

As one proceeds in the examination of the course taken 
by Messrs. Sherman and Hooper it is necessary to note that 
it appears by the records of the proceedings that neither of 
them told — nor did any of the members of the conference 
committee through whose hands the bill with the mysteri- 
ous substitute passed tell — the Senate or the House of 
Representatives that the bill had been changed by some one 
mysteriously substituting for one section of the bill, which 
provided for a silver dollar coin which would u float all 
over the world,” a section closing the mints of the United 
States to the free coinage of silver; indeed, changed into 
a bill which most unjustly increased the amount of money 
due by the debtor classes of society by many thousands of 
millions of dollars, while at the same time it vastly de- 
creased the value, as measured by dollars, of all the houses 
and farms in the land, and, indeed, of almost all kinds of 
property. They did not tell Congress that the bill had 
been changed into one affecting greatly the relative value 
of one of the precious metals to the other. They did not 
say one word about the poverty and degradation and sor- 
row that the legislating out of existence of one-half of the 
money of the country, by which the value of all kinds of 
property from the foundation of the government of the 
United States had been wisely measured, would cause. 
They said not a word about the true character of the bill 
which they had fixed up in a committee to suit themselves. 
If they had done so, there were statesmen in Congress 
who would have pointed out in some degree the enormity 
of the crime against their country that was about being 
perpetrated. Messrs. Sherman and Hooper not only did 
not point out to Congress that the bill as it came from the 
conference was one of the most iniquitous measures ever 
known in the history of the United States, but they asked 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


2 4 

Congress to sanction the report of the conference commit- 
tee, as though for the members of Congress to agree to the 
report would be a mere formality. A sample of the word- 
ing of the report will give some idea of how difficult it was 
for any member of Congress to understand the nature of 
the changes made by the conference committee in the bill, 
especially if it was read but once in their presence. One 
of the sentences of the report read thus: “ That the House 
recede from its disagreement to the amendments of the 
Senate, numbered i, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 
and agree to the same.” 

When the bill passed the unsuspecting House of Repre- 
sentatives Mr. Hooper, by fine parliamentary sharp prac- 
tice, undertook to clinch, so to speak, the passage of the 
bill. Before anybody else could make any motion he made 
two motions. He moved that the bill should be reconsid- 
ered and that the motion to reconsider should be laid on 
the table. As is well known a motion to lay on the table 
is utterly undebatable. Thus no member of the House of 
Representatives could utter one additional word. 

The bill went to the President for his signature. Not a word 
had been uttered to lead President Grant to suspect that 
amidst its sixty-seven apparently unimportant sections was 
a sentence which would bring poverty and all of its attend- 
ant sorrows to unnumbered homes and would vastly en- 
rich, at the expense of almost all classes of society, one 
favored class — and that set of men the creditor class of 
society. 

But the fell work of striking down one of the money 
metals of the world was not, as yet, complete. Another 
Congress might make provision for the coining of dollars 
of the white metal. Something remained to be done to tie, 
as far as possible, the hands of after Congresses. There 
were also a certain amount of dollars already coined that 
were still by law a legal tender for all debts. When Sher- 
man had tried to have a bill passed taking away the right 
of any one to pay any debt larger than ten dollars in silver 
he had failed in the attempt. In the year 1874 a bill 
which purported to be a mere revision of the United States 
laws was presented to both Houses of Congress. The 
gentleman who introduced the bill into the House of Rep- 
resentatives stated that not a line, not a word, not a letter 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


2 5 

of any law had been changed knowingly, and that no new 
law had been substituted for any law, and that if any mis- 
take was made that the spirit of the act was that the mis- 
take should be corrected, and the House was requested to 
pass it just as it was presented by the committee. With- 
out debate the so-called Revised Statutes were adopted in 
the exact form in which they had been presented to Con- 
gress. When, however, the Revised Statutes came to be 
examined it was found that the gold party had gained an- 
other victory over the bimetallic party. The Revised 
Statutes took away the legal tender quality of all silver 
dollars, and thus from all silver money at the time legal 
tender money, for all sums above five dollars. 

Some people who have not studied the history of 
money in the United States may wonder why the clos- 
ing of the United States mints to silver dollars in the 
year 1873 and the demonetizing of them should have 
the effect of demonetizing all the silver coins in the 
United States for sums greater than five dollars. A brief 
history of silver money in the United States will illustrate 
how strategic it was for Messrs. Hooper and Sherman to 
single out the silver dollar as the one to be left out in their 
bill. It is all the more important that a few words in 
passing should be said on this head, inasmuch as a certain 
class of men have sought to create the impression that the 
silver dollar was an unimportant coin in the monetary sys- 
tem of the United States. It has even been spread all over 
the United States by the Associated Press, which is 
controlled by men who imagine that their interests are 
subserved by the demonetization of silver, that only some 
eight millions of dollar silver coins, all told, had ever been 
minted in the United States up to the time when the mints 
were closed to the free coinage of silver money. Among 
the unlearned it has been sought to spread the impression 
that that was all the legal tender silver money that the 
people of the United States had ever had and that that was 
such an insignificant amount that the United States was, 
if not on a paper monetary basis, on a gold basis, when 
silver was demonetized in the year 1873. They effect to 
not know any good reason why the government of the 
United States did not mint more silver dollars than some 
8,000,000. Probably if many of those who have thus 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


2 6 

spoken were asked how many gold dollar pieces — a coin 
inconveniently small — the government has ever minted, 
they could not tell. Not to dwell upon how, in the year 
1785, the old Continental Congress passed a bill which 
made the Spanish milled dollar — which had in it exactly 
the same amount of pure silver which the United States 
standard dollar has always contained — a legal tender coin 
in the United States, and not to dwell upon how this same 
Congress, on July 1, 1789, voted that the silver coins of 
foreign countries should be legal tender money in the 
United States at prescribed valuations — let it here be no- 
ticed that in the year 1806 the government, during the 
administration of the sterling democrat, Thomas Jefferson, 
made the French, as well as the Spanish silver coins full 
legal tender money. Thus the Spanish and French coins 
resembling the American dollar coin helped to supply the 
people of the United States with silver dollars. 

In 1809 Jefferson directed the United States mints, owing 
to the need there was in our country for fifty-cent pieces, 
quarter dollars and other silver coins, which were all in his 
day as truly legal tender money as were dollar pieces, to 
coin them instead of dollars. Thus it came about that not 
a silver dollar coin was again minted until the year 1836, 
when another great democrat, Andrew Jackson, was Presi- 
dent of the United States. Under his administration, in 
the year 1834, the United States government enacted that 
not only should the silver dollar of France be legal tender 
money in the United States, but that the silver dollars of 
Mexico, of Peru, of Chili, of Brazil and of Central America 
should be lawful money in all parts of the United States. 
They also legalized the gold coins of various countries. 
In those days American statesmen, legislating in the inter- 
ests of their country, viewed as a whole, were not afraid 
of having too much specie in the United States. Their 
policy was to draw silver and gold to their country. In 
the year 1843 Congress, pursuing the same line of enlight- 
ened policy, enacted that all custom house duties could be 
paid in the silver coins of Prussia, Portugal, Russia, British 
America, and of other foreign mints. These were the 
laws of the United States respecting the silver coins of 
foreign nations until the year 1857. After that year until 
r 873 the mints of the United States were always open to 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


2 7 


remint them at a valuation never less than $1.29 per ounce 
for the silver which they contained. By the law of 1857 
it was provided that the United States treasury should at 
once redeem and recoin the small coins in circulation of 
Spain and Mexico. All twenty-cent pieces, and even ten- 
cent and five-cent pieces, were thus redeemable. Of foreign 
lawful tender silver coins some $100,000,000 have been in 
circulation. Indeed, the people of the United States had 
the silver of the world to draw upon if the creditor class 
of society endeavored, as they have been doing for years in 
the United States, to make legal tender money unjustly 
scarce and dear. 

In addition to providing for the people of the United 
States foreign silver coins, the government enacted, as far 
back as the days of Washington, that all silver half dollars 
and quarter dollars, and even all dimes, coined in the mints 
which it established should be lawful tender money to the 
fullest extent for all debts and demands. It wisely pro- 
vided — and it would be well for the United States govern- 
ment of to-day, which does not follow the example of the 
great American statesmen of the past, to duly take notice 
of such a provision — that all silver half and quarter dollars, 
and even dimes, should be legal tender money. For some 
fifty or so years not only were these coins full legal tender 
coins, but they contained their proportionate share of silver. 
For example, every half dollar had exactly one-half as 
much pure silver in it, and every quarter dollar had exactly 
one-quarter as much pure silver in it, as had the standard 
silver dollar. If any change has, ever been made in the 
weight of United States dollars, the change, as far as the 
amount of pure silver in the dollar is concerned, has been 
made by altering the amount of gold in the gold coins. In an 
especial sense the silver dollar might be called the standard 
dollar. Of half dollar legal tender coins, which were more 
convenient to carry than were dollar pieces, from $40,000,- 
000 to $75,000,000 were coined. Of twenty-five-cent 
pieces containing exactly one-fourth the amount of pure 
silver that the standard silver dollar contains, there was a 
great amount minted. From the year 1806 to 1839 the 
United States turned out in gold but $23,000,000, while 
in this period they turned out in full legal tender silver 
coins $47,000,000; that is, the United States government 


28 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


in a period of thirty-three years turned out from its mints 
more than twice the amount of legal tender silver dollars 
that it did gold money. For certain reasons the bullion in 
silver dollars, and in half and quarter dollars, was so valu- 
able that in European mints, as well as at the mints of 
India, and in other parts of the world, they could be sold at 
a higher valuation than that of $ 1.29 an ounce. There were 
people who would keep them when they got them, or who 
would buy up, these United States silver coins and resell 
them at a profit at foreign mints, where silver was valued 
at a ratio to gold of at least 15^ to 1. In the year 1853 
the United States government, wishing to keep these sub- 
sidiary silver coins from going to foreign lands, enacted a 
law by which quite a large amount less of silver, some 
seven cents to the dollar, should be put into half and quarter 
dollar coins, and into dimes, than they had always con- 
tained, and that the place of the silver should be supplied 
with a base alloy. The government further enacted that 
these debased coins should be legal tender only to the 
amount of five dollars at any one payment. Senator Mor- 
gan, with great ability, has in recent years endeavored to 
have a bill passed to put into half dollar arid quarter dollar 
pieces a fair amount of silver. The gold party may be 
expected to throw every impediment in the way of the 
passage of such a just law. 

It may here be again noticed that while Congress has 
two or three times changed the amount of gold in the gold 
dollar it has never changed the amount of silver in the 
silver dollar. * 

It can now be seen how, when all subsidiary silver coins 
were debased for the sole avowed purpose of keeping them 
from going to foreign countries and to provide small change 
for the people of the United States that the standard silver 
dollar became a coin of vast importance to our country and 
how, by simply closing the mints to its coinage, one of the 
money metals of the world could be, as far as the people of 
the United States are concerned, demonetized. 

Of course after the legal tender quality was taken away 
from half and from quarter dollar coins the demand for 
silver dollars was greatly increased — especially when, after 
the civil war in the United States, our country resumed 
specie payments. For very many years the bullion value 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


2 9 

of silver dollars was greater than was the bullion value of 
the gold dollar. In 1872 — the year before the mints of 
the United States were wrongfully closed to the free coin- 
age of silver — the bullion value of a silver dollar was 2% 
cents more than was the bullion value of a gold dollar. 
This came about because the ratio of 16 to 1 — or more 
correctly speaking, the ratio of 15.9888 to 1 — puts more 
silver into the standard silver dollar of the United States 
than does almost any government put into any silver coin 
in the world. If the United States government should at- 
tempt to establish a ratio of 18 or 20 of silver to 1 of gold, 
as some cunning members of the gold party and their 
dupes would like to have it do, at some future time all 
the silver of the United States would go abroad. Foreign 
governments, if they opened their mints to the free coinage 
of silver, would have all the silver of the United States 
flowing to them. It would not be treating the bimetallic 
system of coinage in a fair way to try such an experiment. 
No nation, it would seem, in the monetary history of the 
world ever adopted such an unwise ratio between the pre- 
cious metals as some misguided men would betray the 
government of the United States into adopting. Not only 
would it be unjust to compel the people of the United 
States to pay their national debt in more of the precious 
metal than they agreed to pay it in, but it would be, to a 
large extent, the demonetization of silver in the United 
States in a new form. It would cruelly disarrange the 
monetary systems of all nations. It would be following 
the heartless and crafty policy of a set of men who would 
not only wish the silver dollar to be unjustly increased in 
weight until it could not be carried about by the people, 
but would even wish to try a new experiment in the coin- 
age system of the United States in keeping with the crimes 
of 1873-74. 

In the year 1872 the mints of the United States coined 
1, 1 12,900 silver dollar coins. In the year 1873 the mints 
of the United States began coining silver dollars in greater 
numbers than ever before, when suddenly by the Hooper- 
Sherman bill, wrongfully enacted, the mints were closed 
to one of the money metals of the world. Is this colossal 
crime against the best interests of the vast majority of the 
people of America to be perpetrated under a new form ? 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


30 

Are the vast agricultural interests of the United States td 
be still farther sacrificed in the interests of the beneficiaries 
of the crime of the century? The ratio between silver 
and gold, established by the United States government in 
the days of Washington, was 15 of silver to 1 of gold. 
At a later period a ratio of about 16 to 1 was established. 
Many thoughtful people for many weighty reasons believe 
that the highest statesmanship would sanction 15^ to 1. 
The government of the United States, as it is proposed to 
show in due time, is blessed with such a commanding po- 
sition among the nations of the world that it can, by its 
simple enactment, compel the nations of the world to be- 
come its allies in maintaining, at least, any one of these 
ratios between silver and gold. 



THE GREATNESS OF 
THE CRIME. 


W People of the United States were slow in 

discovering that their mints had been sur- 
reptitiously closed to the coinage of their standard silver 
dollar in the year 1873. In that year a panic indeed swept 
over the United States which brought unutterable and far- 
reaching woe into a vast number of homes, but the masses 
of the people did not realize that practically the metallic 
legal tender money of their country had been suddenly 
contracted to one-half of its rightful volume. No newspa- 
per had warned them of the calamity that had come upon 
them. Perhaps the only pamphlet or publication of any 
kind that circulated among the people that could be said 
to have given to the public the slightest intimation of what 
was being done was a statement that was printed in the 
Banker’s Magazine in its August number of 1873. In an 
article that appeared in that number was an allusion to 
what was being done by a certain class of people to bring 
about the demonetization of silver in the United States. 
In this article it was stated that “a capital of £100,000 
($500,000) was raised and Ernest Seyd, of London, sent 
to this country with this fund as the agent of foreign bond- 
holders to effect the same object. 7 ’ 

This significant passage in the Banker’s Magazine does 
not seem to have at the time attracted much attention in 
this country. It is said that Mr. Seyd was the real author 
of the bill which Mr. Hooper first introduced into the 
House of Representatives, but afterwards, it was said, 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


3 2 

assured the House that it was changed so as to make it free 
from objection. 

Congress was slow in discovering that one of the pre- 
cious metals had been demonetized. Grant wondered 
what could be the mysterious reason that silver bullion was 
not coined into silver dollars, which were very greatly 
needed by the country. At last the secret came out. At 
last the newspapers of the country discovered what had 
been done. Many newspapers, however, especially in large 
cities, were bought by the beneficiaries of the crime and 
were used in an exceedingly wrong manner to mislead 
public opinion into countenancing the demonetization of 
one of the precious metals, which for thousands of years 
has been used as a money metal by the largest part of the 
world. At the present day untruths are constantly, in the 
most insidious and cunning of ways, as news reports spread 
broadcast over the land. A brief notice of almost all of 
the leading papers of New York will illustrate how true 
are these statements. The Tribune — a great paper, which 
was once in the van of the battle for the oppressed — is 
now owned by men of great wealth, who run it in a man- 
ner to promote their private interests. However little it is 
generally known they are large owners in the great Tread- 
well gold mine, which is considered one of the largest, if 
not indeed the largest, gold mine in the world. They 
have great private interests of various kinds to subserve by 
the United States government making gold dear and 
investing it with not only its rightful value, but also 
with the monetary value due to the white metal. Thus 
a great paper, which was once bold to a degree that 
was heroic in pleading for the welfare of the slaves of 
the Southern States, can now be seen advocating a mon- 
etary system which was born in folly and sin — a monetary 
system which is fastening the chains of poverty upon many 
millions of people. The Mail and Express of New York is 
run in the interests of the Vanderbilts, who are probably 
the largest owners of bonds and railroad stocks in the 
world. Whatever policy will make gold dear, at what- 
ever loss to their fellow-countrymen, is the one which that 
paper has sought to make Congress believe was the right 
one for it to adopt. The New York Post is said to be 
owned largely by Henry Villard, who is believed to repre^ 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


2 5 

of any law had been changed knowingly, and that no new 
law had been substituted for any law, and that if any mis- 
take was made that the spirit of the act was that the mis- 
take should be corrected, and the House was requested to 
pass it just as it was presented by the committee. With- 
out debate the so-called Revised Statutes were adopted in 
the exact form in which they had been presented to Con- 
gress. When, however, the Revised Statutes came to be 
examined it was found that the gold party had gained an- 
other victory over the bimetallic party. The Revised 
Statutes took away the legal tender quality of all silver 
dollars, and thus from all silver money at the time legal 
tender money, for all sums above five dollars. 

Some people who have not studied the history of 
money in the United States may wonder why the clos- 
ing of the United States mints to silver dollars in the 
year 1873 and the demonetizing of them should have 
the effect of demonetizing all the silver coins in the 
United States for sums greater than five dollars. A brief 
history of silver money in the United States will illustrate 
how strategic it was for Messrs. Hooper and Sherman to 
single out the silver dollar as the one to be left out in their 
bill. It is all the more important that a few words in 
passing should be said on this head, inasmuch as a certain 
class of men have sought to create the impression that the 
silver dollar was an unimportant coin in the monetary sys- 
tem of the United States. It has even been spread all over 
the United States by the Associated Press, which is 
controlled by men who imagine that their interests are 
subserved by the demonetization of silver, that only some 
eight millions of dollar silver coins, all told, had ever been 
minted in the United States up to the time when the mints 
were closed to the free coinage of silver money. Among 
the unlearned it has been sought to spread the impression 
that that was all the legal tender silver money that the 
people of the United States had ever had and that that was 
such an insignificant amount that the United States was, 
if not on a paper monetary basis, on a gold basis, when 
silver was demonetized in the year 1873. They effect to 
not know any good reason why the government of the 
United States did not mint more silver dollars than some 
8,ooo 7 oqq. Probably if many of those who have thus 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


2 6 

spoken were asked how many gold dollar pieces — a coin 
inconveniently small— the government has ever minted, 
they could not tell. Not to dwell upon how, in the year 
1785, the old Continental Congress passed a bill which 
made the Spanish milled dollar — which had in it exactly 
the same amount of pure silver which the United States 
standard dollar has always contained — a legal tender coin 
in the United States, and not to dwell upon how this same 
Congress, on July 1, 1789, voted that the silver coins of 
foreign countries should be legal tender money in the 
United States at prescribed valuations — let it here be no- 
ticed that in the year 1806 the government, during the 
administration of the sterling democrat, Thomas Jefferson, 
made the French, as well as the Spanish silver coins full 
legal tender money. Thus the Spanish and French coins 
resembling the American dollar coin helped to supply'the 
people of the United States with silver dollars. 

In 1809 Jefferson directed the United States mints, owing 
to the need there was in our country for fifty-cent pieces, 
quarter dollars and other silver coins, which were all in his 
day as truly legal tender money as were dollar pieces, to 
coin them instead of dollars. Thus it came about that not 
a silver dollar coin was again minted until the year 1836, 
when another great democrat, Andrew Jackson, was Presi- 
dent of the United States. Under his administration, in 
the year 1834, the United States government enacted that 
not only should the silver dollar of France be legal tender 
money in the United States, but that the silver dollars of 
Mexico, of Peru, of Chili, of Brazil and of Central America 
should be lawful money in all parts of the United States. 
They also legalized the gold coins of various countries. 
In those days American statesmen, legislating in the inter- 
ests of their country, viewed as a whole, were not afraid 
of having too much specie in the United States. Their 
policy was to draw silver and gold to their country. In 
the year 1843 Congress, pursuing the same line of enlight- 
ened policy, enacted that all custom house duties could be 
paid in the silver coins of Prussia, Portugal, Russia, British 
America, and of other foreign mints. These were the 
laws of the United States respecting the silver coins of 
foreign nations until the year 1857. After that year until 
1873 the mints of the United States were always open to 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

remint them at a valuation never less than $1.29 per ounce 
for the silver which they contained. By the law of 1857 
it was provided that the United States treasury should at 
once redeem and recoin the small coins in circulation of 
Spain and Mexico. All twenty-cent pieces, and even ten- 
cent and five-cent pieces, were thus redeemable. Of foreign 
lawful tender silver coins some $100,000,000 have been in 
circulation. Indeed, the people of the United States had 
the silver of the world to draw upon if the creditor class 
of society endeavored, as they have been doing for years in 
the United States, to make legal tender money unjustly, 
scarce and dear. 

In addition to providing for the people of the United 
States foreign silver coins, the government enacted, as far 
back as the days of Washington, that all silver half dollars 
and quarter dollars, and even all dimes, coined in the mints 
which it established should be lawful tender money to the 
fullest extent for all debts and demands. It wisely pro- 
vided — and it would be well for the United States govern- 
ment of to-day, which does not follow the example of the 
great American statesmen of the past, to duly take notice 
of such a provision — that all silver half and quarter dollars, 
and even dimes, should be legal tender money. For some 
fifty or so years not only were these coins full legal tender 
coins, but they contained their proportionate share of silver. 
For example, every half dollar had exactly one-half as 
much pure silver in it, and every quarter dollar had exactly 
one-quarter as much pure silver in it, as had the standard 
silver dollar. If any change has ever been made in the 
weight of United States dollars, the change, as far as the 
amount of pure silver in the dollar is concerned, has been 
made by altering the amount of gold in the gold coins. In an 
especial sense the silver dollar might be called the standard 
dollar. Of half dollar legal tender coins, which were more 
convenient to carry than were dollar pieces, from $40,000,- 
000 to $75,000,000 were coined. Of twenty-five-cent 
pieces containing exactly one-fourth the amount of pure 
silver that the standard silver dollar contains, there was a 
great amount minted. From the year 1806 to 1839 the 
United States turned out in gold but $23,000,000, while 
in this period they turned out in full legal tender silver 
coins $47,000,000; that is, the United States government 


28 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


in a period of thirty-three years turned out from its mints 
more than twice the amount of legal tender silver dollars 
that it did gold money. For certain reasons the bullion in 
silver dollars, and in half and quarter dollars, was so valu- 
able that in European mints, as well as at the mints of 
India, and in other parts of the world, they could be sold at 
a higher valuation than that of $1.29 an ounce. There were 
people who would keep them when they got them, or who 
would buy up, these United States silver coins and resell 
them at a profit at foreign mints, where silver was valued 
at a ratio to gold of at least 15^ to 1. In the year 1853 
the United States government, wishing to keep these sub- 
sidiary silver coins from going to foreign lands, enacted a 
law by which quite a large amount less of silver, some 
seven cents to the dollar, should be put into half and quarter 
dollar coins, and into dimes, than they had always con- 
tained, and that the place of the silver should be supplied 
with a base alloy. The government further enacted that 
these debased coins should be legal tender only to the 
amount of five dollars at any one payment. Senator Mor- 
gan, with great ability, has in recent years endeavored to 
have a bill passed to put into half dollar and quarter dollar 
pieces a fair amount of silver. The gold party may be 
expected to throw every impediment in the way of the 
passage of such a just law. 

It may here be again noticed that while Congress has 
two or three times changed the amount of gold in the gold 
dollar it has never changed the amount of silver in the 
silver dollar. 

It can now be seen how, when all subsidiary silver coins 
were debased for the sole avowed purpose of keeping them 
from going to foreign countries and to provide small change 
for the people of the United States that the standard silver 
dollar became a coin of vast importance to our country and 
how, by simply closing the mints to its coinage, one of the 
money metals of the world could be, as far as the people of 
the United States are concerned, demonetized. 

Of course after the legal tender quality was taken away 
from half and from quarter dollar coins the demand for 
silver dollars was greatly increased — especially when, after 
the civil war in the United States, our country resumed 
specie payments. For very many years the bullion value 


THE CRIME OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


2 9 

of silver dollars was greater than was the bullion value of 
the gold dollar. In 1872 — the year before the mints of 
the United States were wrongfully closed to the free coin- 
age of silver — the bullion value of a silver dollar was 2% 
cents more than was the bullion value of a gold dollar. 
This came about because the ratio of 16 to 1 — or more 
correctly speaking, the ratio of 15.9888 to 1 — puts more 
silver into the standard silver dollar of the United States 
than does almost any government put into any silver coin 
in the world. If the United States government should at- 
tempt to establish a ratio of 18 or 20 of silver to 1 of gold, 
as some cunning members of the gold party and their 
dupes would like to have it do, at some future time all 
the silver of the United States would go abroad. Foreign 
governments, if they opened their mints to the free coinage 
of silver, would have all the silver of the United States 
flowing to them. It would not be treating the bimetallic 
system of coinage in a fair way to try such an experiment. 
No nation, it would seem, in the monetary history of the 
world ever adopted such an unwise ratio between the pre- 
cious metals as some misguided men would betray the 
government of the United States into adopting. Not only 
would it be unjust to compel the people of the United 
States to pay their national debt in more of the precious 
metal than they agreed to pay it in, but it would be, to a 
large extent, the demonetization of silver in the United 
States in a new form. It would cruelly disarrange the 
monetary systems of all nations. It would be following 
the heartless and crafty policy of a set of men who would 
not only wish the silver dollar to be unjustly increased in 
weight until it could not be carried about by the people, 
but would even wish to try a new experiment in the coin- 
age system of the United States in keeping with the crimes 
of 1873-74. 

In the year 1872 the mints of the United States coined 
1, 1 12,900 silver dollar coins. In the year 1873 the mints 
of the United States began coining silver dollars in greater 
numbers than ever before, when suddenly by the Hooper- 
Sherman bill, wrongfully enacted, the mints were closed 
to one of the money metals of the world. Is this colossal 
crime against the best interests of the vast majority of the 
people of America to be perpetrated under a new form ? 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


Are the vast agricultural interests of the United States to 
be still farther sacrificed in the interests of the beneficiaries 
of the crime of the century? The ratio between silver 
and gold, established by the United States government in 
the days of Washington, was 15 of silver to 1 of gold. 
At a later period a ratio of about 16 to 1 was established. 
Many thoughtful people for many weighty reasons believe 
that the highest statesmanship would sanction 15^ to 1. 
The government of the United States, as it is proposed to 
show in due time, is blessed with such a commanding po- 
sition among the nations of the world that it can, by its 
simple enactment, compel the nations of the world to be- 
come its allies in maintaining, at least, any one of these 
ratios between silver and gold. 




III. 



THE GREATNESS OF 
THE CRIME. 

People of the United States were slow in 
discovering that their mints had been sur- 
reptitiously closed to the coinage of their standard silver 
dollar in the year 1873. In that year a panic indeed swept 
over the United States which brought unutterable and far- 
reaching woe into a vast number of homes, but the masses 
of the people did not realize that practically the metallic 
legal tender money of their country had been suddenly 
contracted to one-half of its rightful volume. No newspa- 
per had warned them of the calamity that had come upon 
them. Perhaps the only pamphlet or publication of any 
kind that circulated among the people that could be said 
to have given to the public the slightest intimation of what 
was being done was a statement that was printed in the 
Banker’s Magazine in its August number of 1873. In an 
article that appeared in that number was an allusion to 
what was being done by a certain class of people to bring 
about the demonetization of silver in the United States. 
In this article it was stated that “ a capital of £100,000 
($500,000) was raised and Ernest Seyd, of London, sent 
to this country with this fund as the agent of foreign bond- 
holders to effect the same object.” 

This significant passage in the Banker’s Magazine does 
not seem to have at the time attracted much attention in 
this country. It is said that Mr. Seyd was the real author 
of the bill which Mr. Hooper first introduced into the 
House of Representatives, but afterwards, it was said, 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


3 2 

assured the House that it was changed so as to make it free 
from objection. 

Congress was slow in discovering that one of the pre- 
cious metals had been demonetized. Grant wondered 
what could be the mysterious reason that silver bullion was 
not coined into silver dollars, which were very greatly 
needed by the country. At last the secret came out. At 
last the newspapers of the country discovered what had 
been done. Many newspapers, however, especially in large 
cities, were bought by the beneficiaries of the crime and 
were used in an exceedingly wrong manner to mislead 
public opinion into countenancing the demonetization of 
one of the precious metals, which for thousands of years 
has been used as a money metal by the largest part of the 
world. At the present day untruths are constantly, in the 
most insidious and cunning of ways, as news reports spread 
broadcast over the land. A brief notice of almost all of 
the leading papers of New York will illustrate how true 
are these statements. The Tribune — a great paper, which 
was once in the van of the battle for the oppressed — is 
now owned by men of great wealth, who run it in a man- 
ner to promote their private interests. However little it is 
generally known they are large owners in the great Tread- 
well gold mine, which is considered one of the largest, if 
not indeed the largest, gold mine in the world. They 
have great private interests of various kinds to subserve by 
the United States government making gold dear and 
investing it with not only its rightful value, but also 
with the monetary value due to the white metal. Thus 
a great paper, which was once bold to a degree that 
was heroic in pleading for the welfare of the slaves of 
the Southern States, can now be seen advocating a mon- 
etary system which was born in folly and sin — a monetary 
system which is fastening the chains of poverty upon many 
millions of people. The Mail and Express of New York is 
run in the interests of the Vanderbilts, who are probably 
the largest owners of bonds and railroad stocks in the 
world. Whatever policy will make gold dear, at what- 
ever loss to their fellow-countrymen, is the one which that 
paper has sought to make Congress believe was the right 
one for it to adopt. The New York Post is said to be 
owned largely by Henry Villard, who is believed to repre- 


THE GREATNESS OF THE CRIME. 


4 1 

that would place it far ahead of the English Parliament in that line. So far the 
conversation was at the dinner table between us. His brother, Richard, and 
others were there also, but this was table talk between Mr. Ernest Seyd and 
myself. After the dinner ended he invited me to another room, where he re- 
sumed the conversation about legislative corruption. He said: “If you will 
pledge me your honor as a gentleman not to divulge what I am about to tell 
you while I live, I will convince you that what I said about the corruption of 
the American Congress is true.” I gave him the promise and he then contin- 
ued: “I went to America in the winter of iS72-’73, authorized to secure, if I 
could, the passage of a bill demonetizing silver. It was to the interest of those 
I represented — the governors of the Bank of England — to have it done. 

“I took with me £100,000 sterling, with instructions if that was not sufficient 
to accomplish the objects to draw for another £100,000, or as much more as 
was necessary.” He told me German bankers were also interested in having it 
accomplished. He said he was the financial adviser of the bank. He said: 
“I saw the committee of the House and Senate and paid the money, and staid 
in America until I knew the measure was safe.” I asked if he would give me 
the names of the members to whom he paid the money, but this he declined to 
do. He said: “Your people will not now comprehend the far-reaching extent 
of that measure, but they will in after years. Whatever you may think of 
corruption in the English Parliament, I assure you I would not have dared to 
make such an attempt here as I did in your country.” I expressed my shame 
to him for my countrymen in our legislative bodies. The conversation drifted 
into other subjects, and after that — though I met him many times — the matter 
was never again referred to. (Signed), Frederick A. Luckenbach. 

Subscribed and sworn to before me at Denver, this 9th day of May, A. D. 
1892. (Signed), James A. Miller, Clerk Supreme Court. 

















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THE BLAND-ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


O SLOWLY did members of Congress 
awake to the fact that in some strange, 
wrong, way they had been betrayed in 
the years 1873-74 into demonetizing in 
the United States one of the monetary 
metals of the world, that it was not until 
July 18, 1876, that Judge W. D. Kelley 
of Pennsylvania, who was chairman of 
the coinage committee of the House of 
Representatives, was led to introduce in Congress a bill to 
reopen the mints of the United States to the unrestricted 
coinage of the white precious metal. He was in delicate 
health. Not long afterwards his death was announced in 
the House. 

On July 25, a week after Judge Kelley had moved in the 
House of Representatives to remonetize silver, Richard P. 
Bland had the honor — and it was an honor that any true- 
hearted and enlightened American statesman might well 
covet — of moving in the House the Kelley bill, slightly 
amended. This admirable bill was thereafter to be known 
as the Bland bill. The House, on November 5, 1877, by 
a vote of 163 to 34 — that is, by a majority of 129 votes — 
passed the bill. The bill reached the Senate on December 
6th, and on December nth, a magnificent debate on the 
silver question was begun. At this time John Sherman 
was the Secretary of the United States Treasury, and he 
took advantage of his position to endeavor to frighten the 
Senate against passing the bill. It was, it would seem, in 
part through John Sherman’s influence that Mr. Allison, 




SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


44 

who was a member of the Senate committee on finance, 
reported the bill with amendments — one of which took 
away from the bill the provision which it contained for the 
free coinage of silver, and substituted for it an amendment 
directing the Secretary of the Treasury to buy monthly not 
less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 of silver 
and to have it coined into dollars. Thus amended the bill 
passed the Senate by 48 votes to 21 votes against it. 
Naturally the members of the House of Representatives — 
and Mr. Bland especially — were displeased with the inju- 
dicious amendment made to the bill by the Senate, but 
they felt that it was wiser to even partially open the mints 
to the coinage of silver than to have no legal tender silver 
money, and they finally agreed to the amendment by a 
vote of a majority of 13 1 votes. 

The gold party had tried hard to defeat the bill, as a 
list of various amendments which were moved will illus- 
trate. One amendment that was moved provided that the 
coinage of silver dollars should not interfere with the mint- 
age of gold, and of subsidiary coins. Of course with such a 
Secretary of the Treasury as John Sherman, the provision 
for coining legal tender silver money could have been made, 
to a great extent, inoperative. Another cunning amend- 
ment moved was to increase the weight of the dollar to 
425 grains weight, thus changing the ratio of value be- 
tween gold and silver in the interests of the creditor classes 
and wrongfully affecting the value of a vast amount of in- 
debtedness — involving many hundreds of millions of dol- 
lars worth of United States bonds. Such a shrewd amend- 
ment would have been to a certain extent, the demonetiza- 
tion of silver in another form, inasmuch as it would have 
made the ratio of value between gold and silver in the 
United States very different from what it is in a very large 
part of the world. Of course silver would then leave the 
United States for foreign lands. It would have made the 
United States dollar so bulky that- the coin would be un- 
popular on account of its bulk and weight. Another 
amendment moved when the Bland bill was being debated, 
was the artful one to make silver a legal tender for no 
amount larger than $20. Perhaps the most unjust amend- 
ment of all those which the gold party moved, was one to 
exclude payment of duties and the interest on the public 


THE BLAND-ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


45 

debt in silver. Never has the government of the United 
States, even in the days of its greatest embarrassment 
when borrowing money, agreed to repay it alone in gold. 
Every debt was to be paid either in paper or in coin. On 
February 25, 1862, what were called 5-20 bonds were is- 
sued. The principal of this large issue was to be paid in 
dollars, which might be in paper money, but the interest 
was to be paid in coin. On March 3, 1863, the govern- 
ment made another large issue of bonds, which were called 
10-40 bonds. This issue was to be paid, principal and inter- 
est, in coin. That all these bonds were payable in gold and 
silver legal tender coin is as certain as that the mints of 
the United States were not closed until about ten years 
later to the coinage of legal tender silver money. The 
famous declaratory resolution of March 18, 1869, to 
“ strengthen the public credit,” expressly recognized “gold 
or silver” as the kind of “coin” promised in the preceding 
acts. It also incidentally pointed out that a part of the 
debt was payable “ in lawful money, or in other currency 
than gold or silver.” Had the bondholders been permitted 
to have an option as to whether they should be paid gold 
or silver dollars on any week up to the hour on which the 
mints of the United States were closed to silver they would 
naturally have insisted upon being paid in silver, inasmuch 
as the bullion in silver dollars was more precious than the 
bullion in gold dollars. Shrewd European bankers would, 
as they had been in the habit of doing for many years, 
have been quick to take silver dollars in preference to gold 
dollars. In order to secure the coin with which to pay 
interest on the public debt the government provided that 
duties should be paid in coin. It is very interesting for 
any one who bears in mind how the mints of the United 
States were closed to silver in the year 1873, an d wh° 
bears in mind how the standard silver legal tender coins 
were demonetized by the wording of a section in the Re- 
vised Statutes in 1874 for all sums greater than five dol- 
lars, to note that in Section 3473 of the same Revised 
Statutes of 1874 the customs duties by which coin was to 
be procured with which to pay the interest and principal 
of the public debt were payable in “gold and silver coin.” 
Thus it would seem that the shrewd coterie of men who, 
without the knowledge of Congress or the President of 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


46 

the United States, closed the mints to the free coinage of 
silver and demonetized for all sums greater than five dollars 
the legal tender silver coins at the time in existence, 
so bungled in their work that they did not change Section 
3473 of the Revised Statutes of 1874 — which is still in 
force — which declares that all duties may be paid in u gold 
and silver coin.” At the time the government of the 
United States promised to pay a part of the national debt 
in coin, duly printing the promise on the bonds themselves 
so that every one with a bond in his hands could read the 
promise, the mints of the United States were open, and 
always had been open, to the coinage of silver to the fullest 
extent as truly as they were open to the coinage of gold. 
Nothing is more true than that the word coin, when the 
United States government agreed to pay coin, meant silver 
as well as gold. 

Bland’s bill had most wisely been so designed that 
against legal tender silver dollars coined by the United 
States government legal tender paper representatives of 
coin should be issued. 

Although the gold party was again and again defeated 
in respect to the amendments which they introduced in the 
House of Representatives, yet it did succeed in preventing 
the Bland bill from becoming a free coinage bill. 

When the Bland bill, so amended by the Senate that 
Bland himself would hardly recognize any feature of the 
bill as his bill — but called by the wondrously erratic John 
Sherman the Bland- Allison bill, and at a later date spoken 
of by him as though the spurious bimetallism which rt es- 
tablished was far better than the genuine bimetallic coinage 
system established in the days of Washington — was sent 
to President Hayes for his signature, he vetoed the bill. 
Sherman has declared that he did not advise the President 
to veto it, but one may well feel that if President Hayes 
had had a Secretary of the Treasury with a due apprecia- 
tion of the principles involved in the United States govern- 
ment’s undoing as far as it could undo the evil wrought by 
the crimes of 1873-74, would not have vetoed the bill. 

The House of Representatives, however, promptly, by a 
majority of 123 votes, passed the Bland- Allison bill over 
the President’s veto. On the same day the Senate, by a 
majority of 27 votes, also passed the bill over the President’s 


THE BLAND- ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 

veto, and thus, with no thanks to Sherman, the so-called 
Bland bill — mutilated indeed, and yet a bill destined 
to do a vast amount of good — became a law. At the 
time of its passage Bland nobly thus spoke: “ I give no- 
tice here and now that this war shall never cease so long 
as I have a voice in this Congress until the rights of the 
people are fully restored and the silver dollar shall take its 
place alongside the gold dollar. Meanwhile let us take 
what we have.” The words of Mr. Bland which have just 
been quoted — words which expressed a sentiment deeply 
felt by a very large number of the members of the House 
of Representatives — indicate that the full remonetization 
of silver in the United States, however largely bondholders 
succeed in acquiring the ownership of the newspapers of 
New York and of other cities of our country, will again 
and again be brought forward in Congress until the right 
of the people to a bimetallic coinage system is restored to 
them. By the passage of the Bland bill with the Allison 
amendment to it, Sherman, as Secretary of the Treasury, 
was clothed with an arbitrary discretion by which he could 
buy, if he so chose, not less than $2,000,000 worth of silver 
per month. He was indeed empowered to buy $4,000,000 
worth of silver per month, but in his opposition to any ap- 
proach to a true bimetallic system of coinage, he caused to 
be bought about the smallest amount of silver that he could 
buy without exposing himself to impeachment. He ar- 
ranged a very shrewd way of buying silver — a way which 
would necessarily enable a certain class of people to^drive 
down the price of silver as measured by gold, but which 
would make it practically impossible for any set of men, 
except the governors of the Bank of England — represent- 
ing vast British interests which were enlisted in favor of 
running down the gold price of silver — to, even if* they 
were so disposed, raise the so-called price of the white 
metal whenever a certain class of men chose to run it 
down. For example, arrangements were made by which 
the United States government bought at stated times sil- 
ver from the lowest offerer of silver to Sherman. Suppose 
that a set of shrewd speculators in Wall street or London, 
seeing that the prices of cotton and wheat and other mer- 
chandise of vast value which the people of the United 
States export to England, fall just in about the proportion 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


48 

that the price of silver as measured by gold falls; or, real- 
izing the profits to be made by affecting the price of silver 
exchange between London and India, or the profits to be 
made by affecting the value of stocks in the Stock Ex- 
change in New York, desired to drive down the so-called 
price of silver. All that they had to do was to offer to 
sell to the United States government, represented by Sher- 
man, silver at a lower price than anybody else would sell 
it. The price at which the government of the United 
States bought it would be telegraphed all over the United 
States, and would thus to a very great extent fix the so- 
called price of silver. Suppose that a syndicate of specu- 
lators with a few million dollars, or less, chose to drive 
down the so-called price of silver five or ten cents per 
ounce. All that they would have to do would be to offer 
the United States government 1,000,000 or so ounces of 
silver at a price five or ten cents per ounce lower than any 
one else offered it, or at the price down to which they 
chose to run the silver bullion. The Treasury Department 
would have to buy of the lowest offerer, even if the Bank 
of England, working against the interests of the people of 
the United States, was secretly in the background. In- 
deed, the Bank of England, through which a vast amount 
of the so-called tribute of India is paid to the government 
of Great Britain and to the holders of Indian securities — 
and to, indeed, the holders of all kinds of securities of 
silver-using countries, as well as to the bondholders of 
various kinds in the United States — had such large inter- 
ests to be subserved by running down the gold price of 
silver that it could amply recoup itself for every dollar 
which it spent in running down the so-called price of the 
white metal. Great cotton buyers in England, and buyers 
of wheat and other agricultural products in the United 
States, could thus quietly run down the price of this kind 
of merchandise, and at the same time cause the value of 
bonds and the stocks of railroad companies to rise in value, 
amply recouping themselves by large financial operations 
for whatever amount of money they spent in thus running 
down the so-called price of the white metal in the United 
States. Sherman, as Secretary of the Treasury, was not 
alone to blame for the way that speculators were enabled 
to run down the value of silver, as measured in gold, save 


THE BLAND-ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


49 

as he was responsible for the great crime of 1873 and for 
the opposition to the free coinage bill which had, under the 
leadership of Bland, passed the House of Representatives. 
A free coinage bill would have taken away all temptation 
on the part of speculators to affect the prices of cotton and 
of wheat and of securities of various kinds — indeed, to af- 
fect the value of all kinds of property as measured by gold 
— by running down the so-called price of silver. Indeed, 
it would have made speculation in the so-called price of 
silver as impossible as would have been speculation in the 
price of gold under a bimetallic system of coinage. 

It should be remembered, however, that had not the 
Bland bill, even in its mutilated form, passed both houses 
of Congress, the monetary system of the United States 
would have been in a vastly worse condition than it ever 
was under the Bland law. By the demonetization of silver 
the legal tender money of the United States was con- 
tracted by practically one-half of its entire amount. Thus 
every gold dollar was invested not only with the monetary 
value that rightfully belonged to it, but also with the mon- 
etary value which belonged to the silver dollar. The leg- 
islation was entirely in the interests of the bondholding 
class of society at the expense of the masses of the people. 
A vast number of so-called national banks were established 
and a vast number of national bank notes were put in cir- 
culation, but by a shrewd, cruel law to the debtor classes 
of society these bank notes were not a lawful tender 
money, if the creditor declined to receive them. To this 
day they are not what is called legal tender money. If a 
man owing money on a mortgage should offer to pay the 
debt in national bank notes and request the holder of the 
mortgage to surrender the instrument the creditor could 
refuse to accept the money and refuse to surrender the 
security, and unless the man whose property was mort- 
gaged got gold, or got what are called United States 
Treasury notes and offered them to the creditor, the holder 
of the mortgage could have a man’s house or farm sold by 
law and appropriate gold, or legal tender money, from the 
sale if the property brought the amount of gold, or of legal 
tender money, to cancel the mortgage and to pay all the 
legal expenses which a court would grant for his wringing 
from the debtor the legal tender money with which to 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


5 ° 

cancel the mortgage. It was a very beneficent feature of the 
Bland bill— but the one that a certain class of bondholders 
most hated — that the silver coined under the bill, or the 
Treasury bills representing the silver dollars thus coined, 
were a legal tender for all debts. The creditor class of 
society had to take the silver, or the coin notes represent- 
ing the silver, in payment of money due them just as they 
had to take gold. Thus, to the incalculably great benefit 
of society, the contraction of the amount of money in the 
United States caused by the demonetization of one of the 
money metals of the republic was lessened by $378,166,795 
of silver money coined under the Bland bill before the 
Bland bill gave way to another bill which the erring Sher- 
man preferred that the people of the United States should 
have inflicted upon them, rather than that a bill giving 
back to the people of the United States the bimetallic coin- 
age system should become a law — a system of coinage 
which in every nation in which it has been tried during 
thousands of years of human history has worked happily 
for the people. Every dollar issued from the Treasury 
under the Bland bill was a perfect legal tender money. It 
would pay all debts. It would buy property. It would 
perform all the money functions that a dollar of the yellow 
metal could perform. The 378,166,795 silver dollar coins 
added to the wealth and well being of the people of the 
United States just as much as would an equal amount of 
gold dollars. Indeed this legal tender money in various 
ways was the means of attracting to the United States a 
large amount of European gold. It was instrumental in 
enabling the people of the United States to comparatively 
successfully maintain the value of houses and farms, and 
of merchandise of almost all kinds from falling as dread- 
fully measured in gold as they have fallen in England and 
in Australia, and even in Germany, where silver was in a 
great measure, demonetized not long after the United 
States government had set to the German government the 
example of making money dear and scarce by stopping the 
free coinage of one of the precious metals. 

Every dollar coined even under the mutilated Bland bill, 
although the bill was administered in the unfriendly way 
it was on the part of Sherman, was a blessing to the people 
of the United States, viewed as a whole. It helped to 


THE BLANH-ALLlSON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


51 

supply metallic money of ultimate redemption which the 
people of the United States greatly needed. At best, 
however, it placed exceedingly serious restrictions upon 
the right, which the people of the United States had en- 
joyed from the days of Washington until the year 1873, 
to regard silver as having the same privileges as a money 
metal as has gold. 

In the year 1890 Senator William M. Stewart succeeded 
in introducing into the United States Senate a bill to fully 
remoneuze silver. Despite every opposition put in his way 
by Sherman, who had again become a Senator and was 
chairman of the committee to which Senator Stewart’s, bill 
was referred, a long and very able and remarkably brilliant 
debate ensued, at the close of which the Senate by quite a 
large majority voted to fully remonetize silver. The bill 
then went to the House of Representatives. At that time 
Mr. Reed of Maine was Speaker of the House. He en- 
deavored to use the influence which he, as Speaker, pos- 
sessed to such an extent against the bill that Richard P. 
Bland indignantly characterized before the entire House of 
Representatives his conduct as being grossly unjust on the 
part of a Speaker of the House. The bill failed to obtain 
a majority vote in the House and a conference was pro- 
vided for between the two branches of Congress. In the 
conference Senator Sherman became so conspicuous in art- 
fully framing a compromise bill, which really to a great 
extent defeated the free coinage of silver for the time 
being, that the bill became known as the Sherman bill. 

Although some of the most enlightened members of 
both houses of Congress voted against the Sherman bill, 
and although it was very unsatisfactory to every one who 
desired for their country a genuine bimetallic coinage sys- 
tem, yet, owing to various reasons, it finally received a 
sufficient number of votes to enable it to pass the Senate 
and the House of Representatives. The President signed 
the bill on July 14, 1890. 

By the Sherman bill the Secretary of the Treasury was 
given very arbitrary authority to coin only as many legal 
tender silver coins as he, in his discretion, should think suf- 
ficient to redeem the treasury notes which the bill provided 
he should issue. Strange, indeed, that Congress could 
have been seduced into giving any man such power. It is 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


5 2 

too dangerous to the well-being of society that any man 
should be in a position to arbitrarily affect the values of 
all kinds of property in a republic. Should a Secretary of 
the Treasury, because of illness, or because of an error in 
judgment, or for any other reason, act unwisely in what he 
might be pleased to call the exercise of his discretion in 
the proper amount of bullion to coin into money, he might 
not only be a means of impoverishing, but even of bank- 
rupting his country. Should he even disobey the law and 
be impeached, such a punishment would be but a light one 
compared to the magnitude of his crime and' the evil he 
would do his country. Although the Secretary of the 
Treasury was directed to buy every month 4,500,000 
ounces of silver, or 54,000,000 ounces per year, he is not 
compelled to mint a single legal tender silver dollar. He 
can give as an excuse for not coining any dollar pieces 
that he does not think they are needed to redeem the 
millions of treasury notes which he must issue. In this 
respect the bill differs from the Bland bill. Under the 
Bland bill the Secretary of the Treasury was compelled to 
coin at least 2,000,000 silver dollars per month. Under 
the Sherman bill a Secretary of the Treasury, if under 
what are called Wall Street influences, can be made to 
violate almost every sound principle of a bimetallic coinage 
system. He can defeat the spirit and intent of the bill by 
always paying the treasury notes, so long as there is any 
gold at all in the treasury, in gold, thus ignoring the law, 
which makes treasury notes as truly payable in silver as 
in gold; just as in France the law provides that the Bank 
of France can legally pay drafts in either silver or gold. 
As a matter of fact, only 6,333,245 silver legal tender 
dollar coins were minted in the year 1892 with which 
to redeem all the treasury notes payable in coin issued 
against the silver bought under the Sherman bill. Were 
treasury notes presented for redemption at the treasury 
of the United States in a time of panic there might not, 
even with the help of the limited amount of gold at present 
in the treasury, be enough coin to meet them, although the 
treasury might be groaning with the weight of the bullion 
therein. In what other country in the world, even under 
the most despotic of governments, does any finance minis- 
ter have such arbitrary and shockingly unjust power over 


THE BLAND-ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


S 3 

the coinage of one of the precious metals as does the Sec- 
retary of the United States Treasury, as far as the white 
metal is concerned? The Secretary, invested with power 
to say, to a very great extent, how many legal tender dol- 
lars the people of the United States shall have, may be a 
man so incapable of even managing his own business 
affairs as to be a bankrupt, or he may be a man who has 
but a limited amount of money of his own, or whose ex- 
perience in financiering may have been so limited that he 
is not a suitable person to be made a dictator in the United 
States with respect to the monetary affairs of the people. 

Of course the Sherman bill has some features designed 
to secure to the people of the United States, taken as a 
whole, some great benefits which they could not have did 
they have but gold as their metallic money. A feature of 
the bill of great benefit to the vast majority of the people, 
although the one, perhaps, most hated by the bondholders, 
is that the Secretary of the Treasury, unless he commits 
an impeachable offense by disobeying the laws which he 
by his oath of office is bound to obey, must buy every 
month 4,500,000 ounces of silver, paying for it a fair price, 
providing that he does not pay for it more than $1.2929 
an ounce. For whatever amount of money which he pays 
for the silver he must issue United States Treasury notes 
redeemable in coin. These representatives of coin are a 
legal tender money. They lessen to some extent the value 
of gold, which has been vastly appreciated in value by the 
demonetization of silver. They, to at least some extent, 
help to supply a much needed legal tender currency. They 
prevent, to at least a small extent, the complete triumph 
by the beneficiaries of the crime of 1873 over the debtor 
classes of society. This beneficent feature of the Sherman 
bill helps to prevent legal tender money from becoming as 
awfully scarce and dear as it otherwise would become. 
This is the secret of the hate which a certain class of bond- 
holders manifest for the bill. Were it not for even the 
limited amount of legal tender money put in circulation by 
the Sherman bill when its provisions are faithfully carried 
out by the Secretary of the Treasury the scarcity of money 
in these times, as awful as it is, would be so appalling that 
the awful panic that has lately swept over gold-using 
Australia would probably be duplicated on a far vaster 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


54 

scale in the United States. This is a featureof the Sher- 
man bill which, as long as its provisions are faithfully car- 
ried out by the Secretary of the Treasury — and every 
citizen of our republic who believes that laws should be 
duly carried out is interested in seeing to it that any Sec- 
retary of the Treasury is punished who under any pretence 
defies law — cannot be got over by the enemies of the bill 
as long as it remains in the statute books 

The Sherman bill is an innovation in monetary science. 
Its few years of history contrast in a manner that Amer- 
ican statesmen may well note with the bimetallic system 
of coinage which the people of the United States enjoyed 
for eighty years prior to the year 1873. However greatly 
American statesmen have reason to dislike the Sherman 
bill it is well that they should bear in mind that with all of 
its faults it provides for a better monetary system than 
would be a system which completely demonetized one of 
the monetary metals of the world. The beneficiaries of 
the crime of 1873 an d their dupes are at present in trouble 
at the dilemma in which they are placed by the Sherman 
bill. If the Secretary of the Treasury goes on paying out 
only gold whenever coin Treasury notes are presented at 
the Treasury for redemption then the time is hastening 
when there will be no gold left in the Treasury of the 
United States. 

A peculiarly grave state of affairs at present exists in 
respect to the Treasury Department of the United States 
which may lead to the impeachment by Congress of the 
Secretary of the Treasury. He has at last acted in such 
gross violation of law that Congress cannot, with dignity, 
or indeed rightly, whatever course it may take in respect 
to the Sherman bill, permit any executive officer to act. 
By the Sherman bill it is made the duty of the Secretary 
of the Treasury to buy monthly 4,500,000 ounces of silver. 
This feature of the bill was one of its chief recommenda- 
tions to many who voted for it. Whoever will read the 
debate which took place at the time of the passage of the 
bill will see that the spirit and intent of the bill was that 
these monthly purchases should be made. So independent 
of law, however, has the Secretary, Mr. Carlisle, under- 
taken to act that he has disobeyed the law which, whether 
he liked it or not, he was bound by his oath of office to 


THE BLAND-ALLISON AND SHERMAN LAWS. 


55 

faithfully carry out. His conduct has been such that it 
demands an inquiry — which may lead to his impeachment 
— by the House of Representatives. His conduct has 
been such that Congress cannot with propriety overlook it. 
He has deliberately defied the law by not purchasing the 
amount of silver which the law made it his duty to buy. 
His offense is the greater because Congress has been called 
to meet in extra session to deal with the subject that Car- 
lisle has undertaken to take out of the hands of Congress 
in a manner which the safety of our country demands that 
no executive officer should be permitted to do. He had 
arbitrary power enough without undertaking to nullify the 
law in the manner he has done. There were especially 
serious reasons why these monthly purchases should pro- 
ceed until the Sherman bill is repealed in due form of law 
by Congress. 

Few officers of the government need to be more closely 
watched than does a Secretary of the Treasury. Laws 
should be so framed that as little as possible should be left 
to the discretion of such an officer. The temptation on 
the part of Secretaries of the Treasury to nullify laws 
which they do not like well illustrates how difficult, indeed, 
how doubly impossible it may be to frame any monetary 
system better than that of the simple bimetallic coinage 
system that provides for the free coinage alike of gold and 
silver at a ratio of i to 1 6, or at one in harmony with that 
of i to 15^2, which is already established in many coun- 
tries. But if conduct such as Carlisle has recently indulged 
in is not duly dealt with by Congress, usurpation of author- 
ity may even go so far as to utterly subvert American in- 
stitutions. 

Inasmuch as every compromise which the great and 
growing bimetallic party in Congress has made with the 
beneficiaries of the crime of 1873 has been abused, it is 
doubly to be desired that the year 1893 shall be made 
memorable in the history of the United States by the re- 
adoption of the truly statesmanlike, tried and safe bimetallic 
coinage system, under which the people of the United 
States wonderfully prospered for over eighty years, and 
with which they can hope to command to a large degree 
the commerce of the nations of the world, 



V. 







THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY FOR THE PEO- 
PLE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

^ORE than one hundred years ago the framers 
of the Constitution of the United States in- 
serted a wise provision in that instrument forbid- 
^ ding any State to make by law anything but 
gold and silver a legal tender money for debts. 
The idea of the framers of the constitution was 
that the people of the United States should be insured 
a good metallic legal tender money. Thus it was 
made in a special manner the duty of the national 
government to mint a sufficient amount of gold and 
silver coins to supply every State with a due amount of 
gold and silver legal tender money. 

When in the year 1789 Washington, whose enlightened 
patriotism endeared him to his country, became President 
of the United States, he invited Alexander Hamilton, who 
at the time was in the prime of life, to become a member 
of his cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. Years after 
Hamilton’s death, Daniel Webster, in a speech delivered in 
New York on March 10, 1831, spoke of the first great 
Secretary of the Treasury, as follows: 

“He saw at last his hopes fulfilled; he saw the constitu- 
tion adopted and the government under it established and 
organized. The discerning eye of Washington immediately 
called him to that post, which was far the most important 
in the administration of the new system. He was made 
Secretary of the Treasury, and how he fulfilled the duties 
of such a place, at such a time, the whole world saw with 
admiration. He smote the rock of the national resources 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


58 

and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched 
the corpse of the public credit and it sprung upon its feet. 
The fabled birth of Minerva from the brain of Jove was 
hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial sys- 
tem of the United States as it burst forth from the concep- 
tions of Alexander Hamilton.” 

This tribute by Daniel Webster to the fame of Hamilton 
as one of America’s greatest statesmen is one which may 
well find an echo of admiration in the thoughtful student 
of American history when he reads Hamilton’s reports as 
Secretary of the Treasury to the House of Representatives. 
One of these learned reports was dated January 28, 1791. 
In this celebrated communication to Congress he pointed 
out that the people of the United States should not adopt 
as the unit of their monetary system either a single gold 
or a single silver coin, but that the unit of values in the 
United States should be the gold and the silver dollar, and 
that a given amount of one of the precious metals should 
be equivalent in value at the United States mints, and in 
the eyes of the law, to a certain amount of the other pre- 
cious metal. In short, he recommended the bimetallic 
coinage system, which the experience of thousands of 
years by many nations had demonstrated to be a safe coin- 
age system for the people of the United States to adopt. 

Hamilton, in his terse style, stated in his very able report 
on the establishment of a mint for the United States, that 
“general utility will best be promoted by a due proportion 
of both metals.” In another part of his report he thus 
wrote: “To annul the use of either of the metals as money 
is to abridge the quantity of the circulating medium and is 
liable to all the objections which arise from a comparison 
of the benefits of a full with the evils of a scanty circula- 
tion.” 

Hamilton had the sagacity to perceive that if the metal- 
lic circulating medium of exchange in the United States 
was gold and silver dollars, or their representatives, the 
value of all kinds of property would be measured by the 
quantity of dollars in the republic, and that if either gold 
or silver coins should be demonetized the fortunes of vast 
numbers of people would be greatly injured, while the 
creditor class of society would be enriched at their expense. 
For example, Hamilton saw that if gold should be demon- 


the right rind oe money. 


59 

etized the stock of legal tender money, by which all kinds 
of property is valued, would be reduced, and that, as a 
natural consequence, a house or farm would sell for fewer 
dollars than it would when gold as well as silver was 
money. If gold were demonetized, the demand by the 
people, and the demand by their government, for the pre- 
cious white metal would become twice as great as it had 
formerly been, and it would therefore greatly appreciate in 
value; while the precious yellow metal would no longer be 
in demand for coin and would, therefore, as judged by the 
white metal, greatly sink in value. Hamilton saw that if 
gold was demonetized silver would not only retain all the 
value that had belonged to it as a monetary metal, but it 
would also be invested with all the honor of a coin metal 
that had previously belonged to gold. In short, he pointed 
out that if either gold or silver was demonetized, it mat- 
tered not which, one-half of the coin in the world would 
be destroyed as if by magic, so far as its characteristic as 
a medium of exchange was concerned. The possessors of 
the remaining half of the coin of the world could buy with 
it as much as could have been bought with all the coin in 
the world of both the precious metals before one of them 
was demonetized. A creditor would be enriched in pro- 
portion as the currency would be made scanty. A debtor, 
while nominally only paying the number of dollars that he 
had borrowed when both metals could be coined into 
money, would really be paying dollars which were twice 
as valuable as were the dollars which had been loaned to 
him. 

In another part of his report Hamilton pointed out how 
some nations use silver as money while other nations use 
gold, and how advantageous it would be for the people of 
the United States to have silver money when dealing with 
silver-using countries and gold money to use when dealing 
with gold-using countries. In his incisive manner he wrote 
thus: “It is often in the course of trade as desirable to 
possess the kind of money as the kind of commodities best 
adapted to a foreign market.” 

Hamilton took an enlarged and statesmanlike view of 
the monetary affairs of the people of the United States in 
their commercial dealings with all the nations of the world. 
He knew that a vast number of the human race — indeed 


6o 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


that a very great majority of the people of the world — use 
silver as their medium of exchange while gold is used as a 
money metal by a number of nations. He wisely planned 
that the people of the United States should possess silver 
with which to deal with the eight or ten hundred or more 
millions of people whose monetary system was founded 
upon silver, and that they should have gold when dealing 
with the much smaller part of the human race, with whom 
gold, and not silver, would be the kind of money in use. 

He saw that if the people of the United States had a 
coinage system founded on gold and silver, every coin hav- 
ing a decimal relation in value to all other coins minted by 
the United States, and that if the mints were alike open to 
the coingae of gold and silver, that they would have one of 
the finest, if not indeed the finest, coinage systems in the 
world — indeed one with which, to a very great extent, the 
wealth of all lands could be commanded. 

The learned and statesmanlike Thomas Jefferson, who 
took a deep interest in the devising of a coinage system for 
his country, was at the time Secretary of State in Wash- 
ington’s cabinet. He was much pleased at Hamilton’s 
conclusions respecting the wisdom of the United States 
government adopting as its unit of values the gold and sil- 
ver dollar. In February, 1792, Jefferson wrote to Hamil- 
ton thus: “I return you the report on the mint. I concur 
with you that the unit must stand upon both metals.” 
Jefferson’s statement that the unit of value must stand 
upon both metals was founded upon reasoning that must 
be irresistibly forcible to a student of the history of money. 
Too few American statesmen, it is to be feared, have ever 
duly weighed the greatness of the wisdom of Hamilton’s 
plan for the people of the United States to have silver 
money with which to trade with a vast part of the world, 
and gold with which to deal with gold-using countries. 
One could wish that American statesmen when legislating 
respecting the monetary system of the United States would 
take a view of some lessons taught by the balance of trade 
accounts of their country with the nations of the world. 
These statistics will indeed show some facts of startling 
interest to those who duly reflect upon them. 

In the year 1892 the people of the United States, as 
shown by the statistical abstract issued by the United 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


6 1 

States government for that year, exported to Great Brit- 
ain, a gold-using country, merchandise to the value of 
$344,014,451 over and above any merchandise which they 
imported from Great Britain. To the Netherlands and 
Belgium, which are gold and silver-using countries, whose 
mints, however, are at present closed to silver, the people 
of the United States exported $69,083,970 over and above 
the amount of merchandise which those two countries sent 
to the United States. With gold-using Germany the bal- 
ance of trade was in favor of the United States by 
$22,614,005. To France, whose mints have been closed 
to silver, owing, in a large measure, if not, indeed, alto- 
gether, to the government of the United States having 
closed its mints to the white metal, the people of the 
United States exported merchandise to the amount of 
$3°,57 i , 9 i 4 over and above the -amount which they im- 
ported. From the countries in Europe whose mints are 
closed to the coinage of silver there was, in the year 1892, 
a balance of trade account in favor of the United States of 
$458,994,681. Such a stream of one of the precious metals 
flowing into the United States would have greatly added 
to our wealth. As a matter of fact, however, the people 
of the United States, according to the published statistics 
of the Director of the United States mint, exported in gold 
over and above any gold which they imported $57,570,536. 
For the year ending June 30, 1893, there are statistics that 
appear still more striking than those which have just been 
presented. In this last year the people of the United 
States exported in gold over and above any amount which 
they imported $87,506,463. Thus it is seen that the 
United States in these years not only did not get any new 
gold for all the vast amount of merchandise sent to gold- 
using countries but really had to ship a vast amount of the 
precious yellow metal to Europe. 

What were the reasons for such a strange showing in 
the balance of trade account between the United States 
and Europe. Some people may say that European invest- 
ors in American securities, alarmed lest the United States 
o-overnment should reopen its mints to the coinage of sil- 
ver returned a large amount of bonds and securities of 
various kinds to our country, and such a statement by 
people who do not give the balance of trade account of the 


62 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


United States with all the nations of the world due exam- 
ination may be supposed by many people to give a sufficient 
reason why gold has been flowing from instead of into the 
United States. 

But let us turn to another highly important page in the 
balance of trade account. It appears that while with al- 
most all European gold-using countries the balance of f rade 
account was in favor of the United States, it was the re- 
verse with the silver-using nations whose mints were open 
to the free coinage of silver. To Mexico, where silver is 
the only legal tender money for debts, the people had to 
pay in the year 1892 $13,813,526. To the Central Amer- 
ican States a balance of trade account of $3,646,484 was 
due. To almost all the silver-using States of South Amer- 
ica the people of the United States had a debt in specie to 
pay. Although the trade of the United States with the 
South American silver-using countries is far smaller than 
it should be, especially when Brazil, whose standard of 
value is at the present time gold, is excluded, yet even now 
it would seem that the people of the United States could 
save a large amount of gold if they could pay these debts 
in silver. With silver-using China the balance of trade 
account was against the United States to the amount of 
$14,824,794. To India, whose mints were open to the 
unrestricted coinage of the white precious metal, the peo- 
ple of the United States owed in specie as a balance of 
trade account for the year 1892, $21,098,800. Should one 
pause here it would be seen that if the people of the United 
States could have paid their indebtedness to these silver- 
using countries in silver that the amount of gold shipped to 
foreign lands would have been much less than it was in the 
years 1892 and 1893. Spain is a gold and silver-using 
country, although after the mints of the United States were, 
in a manner unjust to the people of the United States, 
closed to silver, the government of Spain also closed its 
mints to the white metal. The balance of trade account 
between the United States and Cuba, where Spanish money 
is used, in the year 1892, was against the United States to 
the amount of $59,978,101. With Japan, where silver is 
practically the standard of values, the balance of trade ac- 
count was against the United States to the amount of $20,- 
500,091. In Brazil, gold and silver is used, gold, however 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


6 3 

being called the standard of values. It is, one may almost 
say, the only gold-using country to which the people of the 
United States had a large amount in the year 1892 to pay 
as a balance of trade. In that year the people of the 
United States imported merchandise from Brazil to the 
amount of, over and above what they exported, $104,341,- 
73 1 • When one takes a survey of the balance of trade 
accounts of the United States with the nations of the world, 
even taking into consideration the large amount of money 
which is paid to Great Britain on her shipping account, it 
will be seen that even if all the nations of the earth, such 
as France — to say nothing of Russia, with her vast popula- 
tion, where the silver ruble is the standard of values — should 
not open their mints to the coinage of silver, the people of 
the United States would, in proportion as they had silver 
with which to trade with silver-using countries, when the 
balance of trade with such countries was against them, save, 
if they desired to do so, much of their gold. 

How was the vast balance of trade account due by the 
United States to the silver-using countries of the world 
paid by the people of the United States in the year 1892? 
As incredible as it may appear, in the year 1891 the ex- 
ports of silver from the United States over and above the 
amount imported was but $4,564,108. In the year 1892 
the amount was $12,855,473, while India alone in the year 
1891 imported from other countries, over and above what 
she exported, some $70,875,687 of silver. In the year 
1872 the United States, although its stock of silver was 
very small, saved $25,302,543 of gold by exporting that 
amount of silver. In 1873 the United States exported 
silver to the amount of $26,953,369, to say nothing of the 
silver which was being coined into dollars at that time 
faster than ever before in the United States. The silver 
dollar was worth as bullion when the mints of the United 
States were closed to the white metal more than was the 
bullion in a gold dollar. In the year 1892 England ex- 
ported to India a less amount of silver than she did in the 
year 1891, because, strange as it may seem, it would ap- 
pear that England could not get the silver to send to India. 
Let any one attempt to point to any country in the world 
where there is as much as five million ounces of silver in 
bullion, save in the treasury of the United States, where, 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


64 

in accordance with the so-called Sherman law, it is per- 
mitted to remain as bullion instead of being coined into 
money of ultimate payment. 

How was the vast balance of trade account of the United 
States in the years 1891-92 settled with the silver-using 
countries of the world? It has been seen that only a com- 
paratively very small amount of this debt was settled in 
silver. The people of the United States, instead of paying 
these silver debts in silver, had to pay them by buying 
with gold silver exchange of England, which is the great 
rival of the United States for the trade of these countries. 
Thus, to a large extent, it is seen why the United States 
is so often obliged to send to England a vast amount of 
gold instead of England sending gold to the United States. 
Too few American statesmen have ever duly considered 
the greatness of the solemn import of statistics such as 
have just been presented. It has been seen that the people 
of the United States are even having their gold taken from 
them jn order to settle the vast balance of trade against 
them with the silver-using countries of the world. Al- 
though they get more of the white precious metal out of 
their mountains than do any other people in the world, yet 
they cannot be said to have had since the year 1873 the 
kind of money with which to deal with the one thousand 
or more millions of people who use silver as their medium 
of exchange. To a vast extent, as a result of not having 
the right kind of money with which to deal with the peo- 
ple of a large part of South America, the trade relations of 
the United States with the South American republics are 
in a shockingly bad condition. It would be disgraceful on 
the part of American statesmanship not to rectify what is 
manifestly the cause of this lamentable state of affairs. 
While every day magnificent European ships heavily laden 
with European and South American merchandise are going 
in and out of the ports of these South American republics, 
only once in a long while does one see a steamship bearing 
the Stars and Stripes, and then so precarious is its means 
of getting merchandise enough with which to pay the ex- 
penses of running that the government of the United States, 
is compelled to pay out of its treasury money as a subsidy to 
its owners for running it at all. If one goes into the stores 
in any of the great cities of South America, and asks for 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


6 s 

almost any article manufactured in the United States he is 
apt to find that he cannot buy it, while before his eyes may 
be large amounts of European merchandise. South Amer- 
ica carries on trade amounting to hundreds upon hundreds 
of millions of dollars with Europe. Of the vast trade of 
South America the people of the United States are per- 
mitted to have, owing in a large measure to the bad legis- 
lation in the United States respecting silver coinage, but a 
sadly small share. 

Suppose a merchant in the United States should visit any 
of the silver-using countries of South America, and should 
offer to sell its business men merchandise which might be 
ever so well suited to the needs of the people of that coun- 
try. Suppose that the South American merchants should 
say: “We will buy $100,000 worth of your goods. Our 
money is silver.” The merchant from the United States 
would reply: u Gentlemen, I am very sorry to say that, 
inasmuch as in the year 1873 the mints of the United 
States were closed to the free coinage of silver, I cannot 
have your money changed into money of the United States 
except at a loss of, say, 35 or 40 per cent, or more. I 
cannot even tell you the rate at which I can take your 
money, for there is no par of exchange between silver 
bullion and gold. Every day the relative price between 
gold and silver varies, and the government of the United 
States by bad legislation so fosters this kind of speculation 
that silver as measured by gold changes every day, as the 
interests of speculators make it vary.” The South Amer- 
ican merchant, if an old man, could tell the merchant from 
the United States that he could remember the time when 
the silver coins of South America were a legal tender 
money in all parts of the United States. In Washington’s 
day, and again in the year 1834, it was enacted in the 
United States that foreign coins, including those of South 
America, should, at valuations justly prescribed by the 
government of the United States, be legal tender money 
throughout the length and breadth of the United States. 
After these laws were repealed in 1857 any one could by 
taking the coins to the United States mints have them, at 
their fair valuation, transmuted into hlnited States pieces 
of money. In those days the trade relations between the 
United States and all South America were in a fair way 
to become most intimate. 


66 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


What is the reason that the commercial relations be- 
tween the United States and all the other republics on the 
American continent are in the exceedingly unsatisfactory 
condition which even a brief inspection of the balance of 
trade account sadly indicates, especially when the vast 
trade of South America with England is considered? As 
a physician must first know what ails an invalid before he 
can undertake to prescribe for the patient, so it is high 
time that American statesmen should know what ails the 
trade relations between the United States and a part of the 
American continent vaster in extent than all Europe. 

James G. Blaine prescribed what are known as reciproc- 
ity treaties, by which, to a large extent, the need of custom 
houses would be done away as far as collecting custom 
duties on American merchandise is concerned, as it is 
transported from any part of the Western Hemisphere to 
another. But however wise are such reciprocity laws they 
very sadly fail to bring about the trade relations between 
the United States and the people of South America that 
the best interests of the people of the Western Hemisphere 
demand. When, a few years ago, representatives from all 
the republics on the American continent met in Washing- 
ton to confer with each other with a view of advancing the 
best interests of the people of the Western Hemisphere, one 
of the subjects which it was arranged should be considered 
at this memorable Continental Congress was the adoption of 
a silver coin which should be a legal tender money in all 
parts of America. With such a coin an American travel- 
ing on an intercontinental railroad uniting all parts of 
North and of South America with each other would have 
no difficulty in respect to the kind of money with which to 
pay his way. A very much to be desired trade between 
all parts of the American continent would have been hap- 
pily facilitated. As has been stated, for many } 7 ears the 
silver coins of South America, which resemble the United 
States standard dollar, were a legal tender in all parts of 
our republic. But in the United States the party of bond- 
holders opposed to the bimetallic system of coinage given 
to our country by Washington and the great statesmen of 
his times were so powerful at the time of the assembling of 
the congress of American powers that although, as seen by 
the published report of that conference, a magnificent 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


67 

speech by Mr. Estee, a representative of the United States, 
was made in favor of such an American silver coin, the 
beneficent project could not be effectually dealt with at 
that time. The first step which the United States govern- 
ment would have had to take in order to achieve such a 
blessing for the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of peo- 
ple who are to inhabit the American continent was to 
reopen the mints of the United States that had been surrep- 
titiously — would it be too much to say had been feloni- 
ously ?— closed to the free coinage of silver in the year 
r 873, and that step the beneficiaries of the crime of the 
century were unwilling that the government of the United 
States should take. Some of them were even running 
newspapers with which to beguile, as far as they could, 
members of Congress into not remonetizing in the United 
States one of the monetary metals of the world. This 
class of men have been so shameless in their course, and 
for a time have been so successful in running the govern- 
ment of the United States in their own interests that with 
only too much truth even at the present moment one might 
ask: “Is this a government of bondholders and for bond- 
holders, instead of being a government of the people, by 
the people and for the people?” 

Some one may ask: “Are not the mints of Europe at 
present closed to the coinage of silver, even Germany and 
France having followed the example set them by the gov- 
ernment of the United States in the year 1873? Do not 
the people of South America have to pay English mer- 
chants as much silver for merchandise as they pay a mer- 
chant from New York?” While, apparently, the answer 
which should be given to these questions would be “Yes,” 
practically, the answer must be “No.” The English mer- 
chants have an entirely different balance of trade account 
with the people of South America and, it would seem, the 
silver-using countries of the world than have the people of 
the United States. Even when the English merchants 
take silver in payment for the debts due them by the people 
of South America, it seems that in order to please their 
customers and retain their trade, if not for other reasons, 
they allow the South Americans something more for their 
coins than the so-called price of bullion would require. 
Englishmen are glad to get the silver at the price which 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


68 

they pay for it if the balance of trade calls for silver to be 
paid them. The government of Great Britain, which is, 
perhaps, never shrewder than when dealing with money 
matters, controls, partly by means of the Bank of England, 
the silver exchange of London in the interests of English- 
men. The mints of India, which may be called British 
mints, coined in the year 1890 an amount of lawful tender 
silver money equivalent to at least $57,931,333 in United 
States money, or some millions more, while the govern- 
ment of the United States in the year 1892 turned out of 
its mints only 6,333,245 silver dollars. As the people of 
South America owe to English bondholders vast amounts 
of money, a very large part of which was borrowed when 
silver was worth more than $1.29 an ounce — as it nat- 
urally was when the mints of the United States were open 
to the free coinage of silver — and as the money owing to 
English merchants must be paid in gold, no matter how 
scarce and dear it is shrewdly made, the South Americans 
hold to England very much the same relation as do the 
Hindoos. The} 7 have an immense inducement, which is 
equal to a large bonus, to ship merchandise to gold-using 
countries, so as to get the gold with which to pay their 
debts to Great Britain. 

Suppose that the government of the United States should 
as freely reopen its mints to the free coinage of silver as 
they were open for eighty or more years. Then American 
merchants could say to South American merchants, “ Gen- 
tlemen, we offer to sell you whatever we have that will be 
useful to you, taking our pay in your silver, allowing you 
at least 129 cents an ounce for it; that is, valuing your 
silver at a gold fixed value at the ratio of 16 to 1, or (if 
the United States should be wise enough to adopt the ratio 
of 15*^ to 1) valuing your silver money at your own ratio 
to gold, which would make a silver ounce worth more than 
129 cents.” Suppose that when the United States valued 
silver at 129 cents an ounce, or more, the Bank of England 
should continue to try and keep the so-called price of the 
white metal at a low figure — say at 75 cents or so an 
ounce — and English merchants should refuse to value sil- 
ver at 129 cents an ounce. Then the English merchants 
would have to say to the merchants of South America: 
“ Gentlemen, we can only receive your silver money at a 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


69 

great discount — at, say, 75 cents or so an ounce — or at 
whatever price, as measured by gold, the gold clique of 
London will see proper to call its “price.” The South 
American merchants would not hesitate a second in giving 
all of their trade to the merchants of the United States, 
who would have “the kind of money” with which to do 
business with them. The merchants and manufacturers of 
the United States, who desire new markets for their mer- 
chandise, could sell to the hundreds upon hundreds of mill- 
ions of people living in the silver-using countries of the 
world far more cheaply than could the merchants and 
manufacturers of Great Britain, unless, as of course would 
be the case, the Bank of England and the merchants of 
Great Britain would at once give up the iniquitous game 
of driving down the so-called price of silver. But suppose 
that the beneficiaries of the crime of 1873, or their mis- 
guided followers, should succeed in betraying the govern- 
ment of the United States into enacting a law by which 
the mints would only coin silver obtained from the mount- 
ains of the United States. Then the people of the United 
States would not, in the full sense of the words, have “ the 
right kind of money ” with which to deal with silver-using 
countries. As the mints of the United States would be 
closed to the silver of all the silver-using countries of the 
world, the merchants of the United States could not offer 
to take at a fair valuation the silver of South America and 
other countries in payment for merchandise. Such a coin- 
age system would, to a large extent, deprive the United 
States of the trade of one thousand and more millions of 
people. Suppose that the United States government should 
be betrayed into changing the ratio of value between gold 
and silver from 1 to 16 to 1 to 18 or 1 to 20. What would 
be the natural effect of such legislation? Inasmuch as at 
best all the countries which are about being named have 
established a ratio between silver and gold of 15^ to 1, 
the trade of the silver-using world would, to a large ex- 
tent, be lost to the people of the United States. France, 
Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, the Nether- 
lands, Russia, and the Central American States, all of 
South America and Hayti mint their silver at a valuation 
of 15^ to 1 of gold. These nations in the year 1890 had 
at least $1,000,084,000 of silver money in use at that ratio. 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


1 o 

As to India, she had some $900,000,000 worth of silver 
coins in circulation at the ratio of 15 to 1 — that is, at the 
same ratio as Hamilton devised for the United States gov- 
ernment in the year 1891. For many years the ratio 
established by the United States government was 15 to 1. 
It is believed that in all human history there has never been 
a nation which adopted a ratio valuing gold so highly as 
18 to 1. It would be wise on the part of the United States, 
whose silver dollars already contain more of the precious 
metal than do the coins of any nation in the world, with 
the exception of Mexico and, perhaps, of Japan, to change 
its ratio between gold and silver to 1 to 15^, or even to 1 
to 15. If the ratio was 1 to 15 in the United States, while 
it was 1 to 15 y 2 in a large part of the world, then almost 
all silver-using countries would be given a bonus to trade 
with the United States, instead of trading with countries 
whose ratio is 1 to 15^. If the United States should not 
make its ratio at least 15J4 of silver to 1 of gold, the silver 
dollars of the United States might in time all be exported 
to lands whose ratio is 15^ to r, or to India, where the 
ratio is 15 to 1, as was the case, to a very large extent, 
prior to the year 1873. 

The republic of the United States was but in its infancy 
when the ratio of 1 5 to 1 was established in the latter part 
of the last century, when Washington was President of the 
United States. It is now one of the wealthiest and great- 
est of the powers of the world, and the monetary history 
of all the nations of the world in which bimetallism has 
been established — dating back to at least the time when 
Persia was one of the great powers of the world— show 
how easy it is for one great nation to maintain a ratio be- 
tween the value of gold and silver. If, however, for rea- 
sons which are presently to be pointed out, the United 
States government should let its present ratio of about 16 
of silver to 1 of gold remain — or should more wisely adopt 
the ratio of 1 to 15^— the financiers and merchants of 
England may be expected to suit their commercial policy 
to the bimetallic coinage system thus adopted by the great 
republic of the Western Hemisphere, and in their ardor to 
retain the trade of the silver-using world, to practically 
adopt the policy of valuing silver at the ratio already es- 
tablished in India of 15 of silver to one of gold. But it 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


7 T 

would be folly so great and criminal that, if committed un- 
derstanding!}^ by the representatives of the people at Wash- 
ington, it would amount to treason against the commercial 
interests of the United States to enact such an exceedingly 
unscientific, unstatesmanlike and shamefully mischievous 
ratio between silver and gold as that of 1 8 or 20 to i. 
Such a ratio, if successfully established, would cruelly pre- 
vent the people of the United States from obtaining the 
trade of the silver-using countries of the world. It would 
unjustly embarrass the beneficent bimetallic coinage sys- 
tem sought to be re-established in the United State. Such 
legislation as that of still farther putting the United States 
out of harmony with the monetary systems of the nations 
of the world by attempting to make such a foolish ratio 
between the two precious metals as 18 or 20 to 1 would be 
equivalent to giving all the silver-using countries of the 
world a bonus to trade with other nations rather than to 
trade with the United States. India, which raises cotton 
and wheat, with her ratio of 15 to i,and Russia and a vast 
part of the world, where the ratio is 1 5 ^ to 1, would have 
an awfully great advantage in competing for the trade of 
the world over the United States if such folly as that of 
making the ratio 18 or 20 to 1 should crown the bad legis- 
lation of the past respecting silver by the government of 
the United States. However much certain other nations 
might coquette with the United States over the adoption 
of such a ratio they would not, if guided by their own 
self interest, bind themselves to the United States to ob- 
serve such a ratio. Although money is a creation of law, 
and nations can within certain limits maintain what ratio 
they see proper between the value of the money metals of 
the world, yet there is a fitness in having a ratio fixed by 
the relative quantity of one of the precious metals to that 
of the other. It is estimated that there is in the world at 
the present time 43,526,434 pounds, avoirdupois, of gold 
that can be used as money. Of silver it is estimated that 
there is 633,826,889 pounds. By dividing the one amount 
by the other it can be seen that the true ratio in value be- 
tween the precious metals should be as 1 to 14.56. ■ It 
seems that on an average that during the last forty or so 
years only about ten or eleven times as much silver as 
measured by weight has been produced by the world as 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


7 2 

gold. Taking 14.56 to 1 as the ratio which should exist 
between silver and gold it follows that even 16 to 1 dis- 
criminates to the extent of 9 per cent, against silver, and to 
change the ratio to 20 to 1 would be to discriminate 
against the white precious metal to the extent of 34 per 
cent. One of the effects of such a change of ratio would 
be to contract the value, and, therefore the volume of the 
silver money used in the United States from a 1 to 16 rate 
to a 1 to 20 rate — that is, to contract it about 25 per cent. 
This contraction of the amount of money of ultimate re- 
demption would be made permanent. Such a contraction 
would be entirely in the interests of the bondholding class 
of society. It would be giving the bondholding class of 
society a large amount of money from the Treasury of the 
United States to which they are not in the least degree en- 
titled. It would be, to a large extent, the demonetization 
of silver in a new form. It could be shown that such a law 
would not merely drive silver out of the United States and 
incalculably injure the trade of the United States with a 
vast part of the world, but it would cost the people of the 
United States thousands of millions of dollars by the effect 
it would have upon the prices of cotton and of wheat and 
upon not only the agricultural products of our country, but 
upon almost all kinds of property in our republic. But 
should the United States government adopt, say the ratio 
of 153^ of silver to 1 of gold, then other nations would 
have the inducement of getting a share of the trade of the 
silver-using countries of the world to even value silver at a 
ratio to gold at a better figure than that of even 15^2 to 1. 
Thus there would be a subtle so-called natural law that 
would exert a mighty power to constantly increase the 
value of silver. 

There are some ten or twelve hundred million people in 
the world whose medium of exchange is silver. In Asia, the 
greatest in area of the continents of the world, there are 
in China and India some six or seven hundred million peo- 
ple or more whose money is silver. Napoleon I. at one 
time aimed at controlling, to a large extent, the vast trade 
of the Orient by seizing the Isthmus of Suez. When 
Columbus in his frail vessels discovered America his heart 
might well beat quickly, as he thought that he had found 
a new route for the immense amount of wealth-producing 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


73 

commerce between Europe and India. It would be great 
and grand statesmanship which would open the commerce 
of the Orient to the people of the United States upon more 
favorable terms than it is open to their great commercial 
British rivals for the trade of a large part of the world. 
Great Britain so values her commerce with India that it 
seems she would be ready at almost any moment to engage 
in a great war with Russia or any other power that would 
attempt to control the interoceanic canal at the Isthmus of 
Suez. Comparatively few Americans know how well 
Great Britain guards that isthmus by holding points for 
hundreds of miles on either side of it; even controlling the 
Island of Cyprus, which holds to the Isthmus of Suez a 
position somewhat similar to the commanding one which 
the Island of Cuba holds to the American isthmus. That 
narrow waterway across the Isthmus of Suez England 
guards as a vitally 7 important strategic point to the British 
empire. But the moment that the government of the 
United States opens its mints to the unrestricted coinage 
of silver, so that American merchants can say to the people 
of India, “We will take your silver in payment for such 
merchandise as you will buy of us, allowing you at least 
$1.29 per ounce or more for it, that moment natural forces 
will be set in motion which will compel Great Britain to 
recognize that the United States government has restored 
the rightful parity between silver and gold in all parts of 
the world. Glad, indeed, would be England then, in order 
to retain (if it would be possible for her to do so) her trade 
with a large part of the world, to offer to give silver-using 
countries even more for their silver than the United States 
merchants could give if the ratio in the United States 
of silver to gold was as 16 or 15 y 2 to 1. England would 
surely offer to pay at the rate of 15^ to 1. Indeed, so 
severe might the competition between the United States 
and Great Britain and other nations become for the trade 
of silver-using countries that Great Britain would be 
greatly tempted to adopt a policy suited to the altered 
state of affairs, and to even value silver at a ratio to gold 
of 15 to 1, thus taking away, if possible, the trade of 500,- 
000,000 to 1,000,000,000 or many more people from the 
United States. Such considerations as these illustrate how 
it is likely to come about that the moment the government 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


74 

of the United States returns to the beneficent bimetallic 
coinage system which was wrongfully erased from its 
statute books in 1873, that not only will a true parity of 
value at a lawful ratio be restored between gold and silver, 
but also illustrate one of the various reasons why the mo- 
ment that the mints of the United States are reopened to 
the white metal a scramble, so to speak, must at once take 
place among the commercial nations of the world for silver. 

It would be interesting to here speak of how England 
would then get vastly less of the white metal from silver- 
using countries in payment for interest on bonds than she 
now gets, and how England might — and indeed would — 
have to become a great buyer of silver at at least $1.29 an 
ounce in order to pay her balance of trade account with 
India and with other silver-using countries. No one would 
sell silver to England for less than $1.29 an ounce when 
he could have it minted in the United States at that rate. 
It would be especially interesting to here dwell upon how 
the United States government could especially control the 
trade of a large part of South America, whether or not Eng- 
land — as she surely would be compelled to do — valued 
silver at a ratio to gold of at least 16 or 15^2 to 1 — and 
how, ir the spirit of the American policy known as the 
Monroe doctrine, the government of the United States 
would lighten by half or more the yoke of indebtedness 
which European countries have fastened on all the Amer- 
ican republics south of the United States — indebtedness 
which at any time may cause grave complications between 
America and Europe to arise. By far-sighted, high Amer- 
ican, statesmanship the government of the United States, 
by making silver nearly twice as valuable as it is for mone- 
tary purposes when its mints are closed to silver legal ten- 
der money, will lessen by one-half the vast tribute which 
American silver-using countries — as well as the oppressed 
people of India — have to yearly wrongfully pay to get gold 
with which to pay to the bondholders of Great Britain and 
Europe. As the American continent produces almost all 
the silver in the world, except what Australia produces, 
the American republics of South America will be doubly 
helped to pay their great public debts. They will, when 
they see the government of the United States delivering 
them from the awful thraldom of indebtedness to European 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


75 

bondholders that is now upon them, feel more than they 
have ever felt admiration for, and the deepest gratitude to, 
the great republic of the Western Hemisphere for wielding 
its mighty influence in the interests of the people of the 
American continent. 

The government of the United States is blessed with 
such a commanding position among the nations of the earth 
that by simply restoring to the people of the United States 
the bimetallic coinage system which was wrongfully erased 
from the statute books in the years 1873-74 it can give to 
all nations the alternative of recognizing the parity of value 
established in the United States between gold and silver or 
of surrendering to the people of the United States the im- 
mensely lucrative trade of all the silver-using countries of 
the world. Thus by natural laws all the nations of the 
world would become allies of the United States in insuring 
the success of their bimetallic system of coinage. 

Should the people of the United States reopen their 
mints to the unrestricted coinage of silver and should they 
wish from time to time to exchange their silver for British 
gold, they could easily make the exchange. Suppose, for 
example, that an American citizen, or, indeed, that any 
one, wished to turn one million of silver dollars into En- 
glish gold. One way by which he could do as he wished 
would be to buy by telegraph through the New York stock 
exchange one million dollars’ worth of stocks or bonds of 
some well-known railroad company — say of the Hudson 
River railroad. Silver being a lawful tender money in the 
United States as well as gold, he could pay for the bonds in 
silver. Then let him have his Hudson River railroad bonds 
sold in the London stock exchange, as he could easily do. 
As gold is the only legal tender money in England, he 
would be paid in gold, and thus his million dollars in silver 
would be changed into English gold. As long as English- 
men would buy such bonds as the Hudson River railroad 
and other American securities of various kinds, so long 
this mode of converting American silver into English gold, 
if there was any special object in doing so, could be contin- 
ued, and thus, despite all England could do, a stream of 
gold, whenever wanted in America, could be made to flow 
out of Great Britain into the United States. 

It has already been seen that with their mints open to 


SILVER AND GOLD MONEY. 


76 

the free coinage of silver the people of the United States 
could settle their balance of trade account with silver-using 
countries, which, as a rule, has been for years greatly against 
them, in silver. Thus they could save sending to London 
a large amount of gold with which to buy silver exchange 
to pay their debts to silver-using countries. The exports 
from the United States to Europe are chiefly agricultural 
products. United States’ cotton, wheat and other articles, for 
reasons widely known, would, when the ratio between gold 
and silver was restored by the mints of the United States 
being reopened to the unrestricted coinage of silver, com- 
mand yearly hundreds of millions of more dollars than 
they can command when silver, as measured by gold, is 
reduced sixty cents or more per ounce. Thus a vast 
stream of gold would flow from Europe to the United 
States. But when this much has been said, but a beginning 
has been made in depicting the vastly great and many ben- 
efits which would naturally flow to the people of the United 
States by their returning to the safe and tried bimetallic 
coinage system established for them in the days of Wash- 
ington. 

The English government has, it would seem, lately at- 
tempted, by arbitrarily closing its mints to the free coinage 
of silver in oppressed India, to prevent the government of 
the United States from restoring to the world the bimetal- 
lic coinage s} T stem by which American statesmanship a 
century ago made impossible such financiering in England 
as has most unjustly enriched, during the last twenty years, 
a certain small class of people at an awful cost to the vast 
majority of the citizens of the United States and of many 
other lands. 

An hour, it is to be hoped, is about to strike when En- 
glish statesmanship will be compelled to acknowledge — as 
gracefully as men defeated in the attempt to make the 
money of the United States and of other countries dear and 
scarce, to the misery and ruin of unnumbered millions of 
people, by taking away the monetary value from a metal 
which, from prehistoric times and all through human his- 
tory, has been one of the money metals of the world, are 
capable of making such an acknowledgment — that no 
European government is powerful enough to prevent the 
republic of the Western Hemisphere from restoring by wise, 


1 


THE RIGHT KIND OF MONEY. 


77 


if sadly late, statesmanship the parity in value between 
gold and silver at a ratio of i to 16, or i to 15^. England 
has already gained vast wealth and incalculably great 
plunder from the people of the United States by their hav- 
ing delayed as long as they have the opening of their mints * ' 
to the unrestricted coinage of silver. 

Give the people of the United States the right kind of 
money with which to deal with gold-using countries, and 
the right kind of money with which to deal with the one 
thousand million and more people whose medium of ex- 
change is silver; in short, let the people of the United 
States adopt the bimetallic coinage system devised for 
them by the great statesmen who planned the constitution 
of the United States, and Hamilton’s wise statement that 
“It is often, in the course of trade, as desirable to possess 
the kind of money as the kind of commodities best adapted 
to a foreign market,” will be quickly seen to be true by 
the people of the United States and by the statesmen of 
all nations. 











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